Animenter There are women in the film, but none has anything you could call a personality.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

swdavies49 Two of the previous reviews have the names of the main characters reversed, another is reviewing the wrong movie, and lots of them can't spell. But anyway, the film is both elegant and funny, the characters make wonderful facial expressions, and even though the version I watched was a little scanty with the subtitles, it wasn't hard to understand what was happening. I think the characters are very appealing. They are not sentimentalized as some of Chaplin's characters are, but they are still very sympathetic. What surprised me the most was how modern the sets looked - very spare and elegant. I don't know if actual places in the 1930's ever looked like the President's home, and I suspect very few places anywhere ever did, alas.

Michael_Elliott A nous la liberte (1931) ** (out of 4) I know this film is hailed as a masterpiece and I know Chaplin's Modern Times owes a lot to it but that doesn't mean the film worked for me. Clair's satirical look at factory workers and their owners who are willing to exchange them for machinery is suppose to be a comedy but I'm not sure which part of it is. Having now seen the film for myself, I can see why the original company went after Chaplin because there's no way in hell that this film didn't influence Chaplin and his masterpiece. However, to me it seems Chaplin saw a technically brilliant but soul less film and made a much better picture. Credit should be given to Clair because the technical look of this film is brilliant and the music score is top notch but that's about as far as my admiration goes. There wasn't a single time in this film where I laugh and I only cracked a smile a couple times. The film is clearly spoofing the factory workers yet I could never see any of the spoof Had you not told me this was a comedy then everything on screen comes off as drama because it doesn't seem to me that there was any attempt for laughs. Another problem I had was the dialogue, which was great but at the same time it kind of went against what was going on in the scenes. The movie is filmed in a silent manor and in my opinion it probably would have worked best as a silent movie. The spoken words because somewhat distracting from the technical side of things so it came off to me as Clair was either making a silent film and later decided to make it sound or the film is just uneven.

LCShackley Rene Clair's first film was the bizarre surrealist short ENTR'ACTE, which had music (and a cameo) by composer Erik Satie. Also showing up briefly in that film were two of Satie's young protégés, Darius Milhaud and George Auric.When Clair made the talkie A NOUS LA LIBERTE, he hired Auric to do a completely original score, which was not common at the time, and a lot of the scenes were shot to recordings of the Auric music. This was only Auric's 2nd film (after Cocteau's BLOOD OF A POET) but he already shows the mastery that would lead to well over a hundred further scores.Clair and his Oscar-nominated designer fill the screen with wonderful art deco visuals, and there's a sympathetic cast cemented by the two central characters, Louis and Emile. There are some wonderful physical comedy bits in the film (mostly in the factory), as well as the social satire which I didn't find particularly heavy-handed (although that adjective has been used by others). The fine balance of music, visuals, and comedy makes this a winner.

Steamcarrot This is a little gem of a film that doesn't date nearly as much as you would think, considering it come from the early thirties. The masterful hand of director Rene Clair overcomes an insubstantial plot and imbues the film with some fantastic visuals, humorous satire and some good clean knockabout fun. Two prisoners escape from custody and one reaches the top of the ladder while the other clings onto the bottom rung. Clair makes his feeling about capitalism clear by showing how the worker under the capitalist is as much a prisoner as the people locked in the jail. But any political overtones are not so much that they interrupt with the comic narrative and the film merrily continues with it's chases, bottom-kicking and all manner of good-natured silliness. Highly recommended.