070 - Freedom to Us! (A Nous La Liberté), 1931, France. Dir. Rene Clair.

Saturday, March 11, 2017

070 - Freedom to Us!  (A Nous La Liberté), 1931, France. Dir. Rene Clair.

Catch that handkerchief!

What do you get when you combine Charlie Chaplin with Frank Capra?

Modern Times with You Can't Take It With You?

And throw in a little Keystone Cops.

And a prison break.

Or two.

And love!

And set it in France.

And add Rene Clair's penchant for great songs and great music.

A Nous La Liberté.

Freedom to Us!

With each film we have seen these past three days, Clair gets better and better.

Emile and Louis are trying to escape from prison.  Emile cuts his arm and Louis bandages it with a handkerchief.  This bonds them.

Louis makes it out but Emile does not.  While running away, Louis runs into a cyclist and knocks him over.  He jumps on his bicycle and rides.  It turns out he is in a cycling race.  He wins!

They crown him and go to take his picture.  Hide that giant number on your chest!

He goes to a pawn shop to get some new shoes.  Someone else buys something and leaves money on the counter.  When the proprietor is not looking, Louis takes the money and then gags himself and lies on the floor screaming for help.  The proprietor sees him and assumes Louis is the victim.  He runs off looking for the thief while Louis walks away with the money.

And the shoes.

Louis gets a job at a phonograph store.

Vinyl is all the rage!

Record players played a record role in our first film People on Sunday (001, January 1), as one of our protagonists was a phonograph saleslady.

Since then we have seen a high percentage of our films feature vinyl records, record players, jukeboxes, CDs, and radios.

Music is important to film.

Not just the score, but also in the lives of the characters.

Back at the prison Emile hears a beautiful woman singing inside her apartment.

(Never mind that she is living across the street from the jail in the open square.  This is a movie!)

Or so he thinks she is singing.

She is playing a record in her apartment.

Her song is describing love.

He falls in love with her song.  And with her.  He grows depressed that he is locked up and cannot have her.

He hangs himself.

But the weight of the rope on the bars breaks the bars!  The window is now open.  He can escape.

Don't you just love the movies?

Emile climbs out the window.  He stands beneath the woman's window and listens to her singing.

At least he thinks she is singing.

She walks out onto the sidewalk and stands next to him.  Finally, he sees her.  His love!

Her uncle comes and whisks her away.

He gets her handkerchief.  Now if he can just get her.

Emile gets a job at the phonograph factory.

Rene Clair in a series of visual puns shows life at the prison, life at the factory, and life in the classroom.

People march in line.  People stand or sit in rows.  People perform mundane tasks in a rhythmical manner.

It is visually brilliant filmmaking.

In a stroke of movie magic, Emile discovers that his old prison mate Louis is now the director of the plant.  Disguised in a new moustache, hat, and glasses.

At first Louis pretends not to recognize Emile.  He treats him harshly.

Then he takes him into a private room and gives him money.

Then he sees the cut on Emile's arm.  The cut is reopened.  Louis' heart is opened.  He goes to bandage Emile's arm with Emile's handkerchief.

Not that handkerchief!  It is hers.

Louis uses his own handkerchief.

And now, like Joseph and his brothers, Louis, the former prisoner now in power, will bless Emile with favor beyond his wildest dreams.

He will take care of him.  And see to it that he gets the girl.

Because, in a stroke of movie magic her uncle also works at the factory.  And will do whatever Louis asks.  Louis will pay the dowry.  The uncle will see it as the chance of a lifetime.  Surely the girl will come around.

Things go well until they go badly.

A group of thieves know who Louis really is.  And they blackmail him.

And now the plot thickens.

What will happen to Louis?  What will happen to Emile?

This movie is light and sophisticated and entertaining.

And it features the joyful music and daring camera movement that Rene Clair has become known for.

And artful production design.

With some sets employing expressionistic minimalism.  Great rooms with bare walls and geometric angles and harsh lighting.

And with other sets employing minute detail.

A woman, not the girl but another character, wears one of the finest gowns you will see in the movies.  And Louis rides in a fantastic car.

But Rene Clair in his determinism will not allow these men to make it scot-free, and he will present a utopian view of the future that is neither realistic nor desirable, where everyone sits on the riverbanks fishing all day while machines do all the work for them.

Like some other artists and like the movies mentioned above, he does not celebrate the power of free enterprise, hard work, saving, intelligent investing, frugality, and charity.

Rather, he criticizes entrepreneurs who take risks, work hard, create jobs, and bring good to people.  He sees life through the lens of fate, of the rich and the poor, of the haves and the have-nots.

Without considering that people can change their lot in life with a good job and a wise use of saving and investing.

One would love to see great filmmakers telling great stories who actually understand how money works.

Consider the parable of the talents.  A master gave three men three different sums of money.  He gave one 5 talents, one 2 talents, and one 1 talent.  The man with 5 talents invested it and doubled it to 10.  The man with 2 talents invested it and doubled it to 4.  The man with 1 talent indulged in his fears and buried it in a hole in the ground.

The two who invested their talents are the good guys.  The master is the good guy.  The man who wasted his talent is the bad guy.

Sometimes artists get this exactly backwards.  They tell stories through the eyes of the man who wasted his talent.  They try to make him the good guy.  Like him, they point their fingers at the master and complain about how the world works.

Except the world would work for them just as well if they would invest their talent and not bury it in a hole in the ground.

What if we made movies from the point of view of the man who doubled his talents?

What if we made movies from the point of view of the master?

This movie is called Freedom To Us.

But sitting on the riverbanks fishing all day without ever working is not freedom.  The escape from the need to work is not freedom.  That is poverty.  And it is its own prison.

Working hard at something you love in a system of free enterprise, that is freedom.

Freedom to us!