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| Raymond
Cordy, Henri Marchand, Rolla France |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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n/a
An escaped convict becomes president
of a record factory, where he encounters his former cellmate as
one of his factory workers.
 This
utterly charming comedy is one of the lesser-known true classics
of French cinema. Director René Clair used to be known as
one of the geniuses of his time, but his highly stylized studio-produced
work became unfashionable amongst critics and he was relegated to
the sidelines of history in favor of contemporaries like Renoir
and Vigo. Fortunately, a re-appraisal of his work is now well underway,
and his feature-length masterpiece À nous la liberté
is slowly regaining some of the huge reputation it once had.
Its slight tale of two convicts who share a cell and meet again
later in life at opposite ends of the class spectrum is hugely naïve
but immensely winning. The mobility with which Clair's camera soars
across mammoth sets is highly impressive even today, and the ingenious
way of experimenting with sound marks the director as one of the
true pioneers of the early sound era, and someone who was well ahead
of his time. He shared many traits and sensibilities with Chaplin,
who seems to have borrowed quite a few ideas from this film for
his later masterpiece Modern Times. Funny, charming and effervescent,
À nous la liberté is a truly timeless film
classic that has lost none of its charm over 70 years later. |
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Only available from the Criterion Collection
as a non-region-coded release.
The fullscreen image is framed
at its original aspect ratio of approx. 1.33:1. The print has been
cleaned up nicely and is in excellent shape for a film over seventy (!)
years of age.
The mono sound mix is presented in Dolby Digital 1.0, and although
it is clearly limited in fidelity by the fairly primitive technical
conditions of the time, music and dialogue come through nicely and
without any great distortion.
The most welcome extra included
on this release is Clair's most famous - and probably his best -
film Entr'Acte, a hilarious 20-minute comedy of surrealism
and immense charm. This short has been impressively restored, resulting
in a better-looking presentation of this famous work than ever before.
Supplements to the film include a sweetly touching and informative
interview with the director's widow, who reminisces about
her late husband and displays numerous personal objects that were
important to his life and work. Even more interesting is an audio
essay by Chaplin biographer David Robinson that deals with the
lawsuit brought forth against Chaplin's film Modern Times
for alleged plagiarism. Robinson reveals that Clair himself would
have nothing to do with this suit himself, as Chaplin was one of
his idols and he had 'borrowed' other elements himself from Chaplin
over the course of the years. Two deleted scenes had been
removed by Clair himself just before the film opened, and have been
included here, featuring the famously deleted scene of a singing
flower. An excellent collection of extras, especially considering
this DVD is released in Criterion's more modestly priced range of
titles. Highly recommended.The animated main menu screen is
designed like a record rotating on a turntable, with the outstanding
visual design and navigation that has become one of the hallmarks
of Criterion Collection releases. The 'Play film' option however
failed to start the film on our player, forcing us to take an extra
trip to the nicely designed Scene Selection menu screen from which
we then could access the first scene without any further trouble.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed:
September 26, 2002
Click
here for IMDB info on A
nous la liberte.
Click here
to return to the front page.
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