It is not astonishing that René Clair's picture, "A Nous, la Liberté," which came to the Europa yesterday, mystified its first-night audience in Paris, for one might hazard that this French-language combination of fantasy and realism is like snapshots of a weird dream. The tale itself, M. Clair's own account of two prison pals, first inside and then away from jail, is sufficiently lucid, but the manipulation of the incidents is quite another matter. There is little real dialogue, music being often relied upon to do the "talking." The characters frequently give vent to their thoughts in song, whether they are behind the bars, in a factory or in a banquet hall. And unlike M. Clair's previous hilarious contribution, "Le Million," the humor in this new venture, despite its farcical nature, is provocative of thought rather than laughter.
"A Nous, la Liberté" is assuredly different from any other screen feature. It bristles with strange originality. It almost descends to slapstick in one sequence, but even that is set forth imaginatively. In contradistinction to the skittish happenings, there are the cleverly designed settings for the scenes in both the prison and the factory. This angle of the production is extraordinarily thorough, every detail having received most careful attention.
There have been unique introductory glimpses in many pictures, but M. Clair goes all one better by showing prisoners at work making toy horses, some of the inmates sticking legs into the wooden bodies, others doing the painting, and so forth. Emile and Louis, the principals in this fable, are among those at the long table with a moving section in the centre. Following this the convicts are beheld at their evening meal, with the running centre-board on which are the salt, pepper, sugar and bowls of food from which the prisoners help themselves.
It is really quite a dramatic sequence where Emile and Louis, armed with a grappling iron on the end of a rope, are ready to make their escape from their cell. The window bars have been neatly filed and the two men crawl out of their cell, ready to risk their necks by scaling a high wall. Louis, with the aid of his friend, succeeds in getting away, but before the unfortunate Emile can climb the wall he is caught by the keepers.
M. Clair arranges a neat way for Louis to avoid detection. The convict, once in the street, bowls over a speeding cyclist. While the dazed man is on the ground, Louis, who has disrobed down to his underwear, rides away on the bicycle. And then comes one of the few bits at which the spectators laughed. It is where Louis is greeted by a throng as the winner of the cycling race.
Putting to practice some of the ideas of prison, Louis, in course of time, becomes a wonderfully wealthy phonograph manufacturer. His appearance is greatly changed by his prosperity. Eventually Emile is freed from prison, and without knowing that his former cell-mate is managing director of the factory he succeeds in getting employment in the works. One day Emile is told that he must appear before the managing director, and to his astonishment he sees Louis, who is at first reluctant to admit his identity.
These ex-convicts have a high old time in the factory. In one episode a painting of Louis is used for fractious doings. The prison pals look at the painting and then they throw cakes from a buffet table at it, and they roar with laughter when Louis hurls a stone gin bottle through the centre of the canvas.
Louis's labor-saving devices in the factory are beheld in many of the scenes, and in one of the latter interludes he caps all his other ideas by an invention whereby the phonograh parts are assembled automatically after going through a little tunnel.
As for the romantic side of the story, Emile, a dreamy sort of fellow most of the time, falls in love with a girl worker named Jeanne, but she is not interested in him. When Louis hears about this he insists on the match between the two, giving Jeanne's old uncle a check for her dowry. But nothing comes of this forced alliance.
The police ultimately learn that Louis is an escaped convict and he decides to flee with his pal. Louis stocks a bag with banknotes, but during a high wind the bag is blown off a table and opens, and soon the air is filled with 1,000-franc notes and also with the tophats of factory, officials who are holding an open-air meeting.
In the final fade-out Louis and Emile have discovered liberty away from prison and work—they are happy tramps, glad to get a few sous with which to buy bread.
Henri Marchand gives a commendable performance as Emile, and Raymond Cardy is capital as the more vigorous Louis. Rolla France is pleasing as Jeanne, and Paul Olivier is excellent as the girl's uncle.
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