52. A Nous la Liberte/Freedom for Us (1931)

Running Time: 87 minutes

Directed By: Rene Clair

Written By: Rene Clair

Main Cast: Raymond Cordy, Henri Marchand, Rolla France

'FREEDOM FOR US' GAVE ME NO FREEDOM FROM OVERRATED FILMS

Rene Clair bursts onto the scene with a film that I thought I'd really like, but was left feeling very unfulfilled.

Louis and Emile are two conmen who conspire to escape from priosn. When they finally make their getaway, Louis is able to get out, but Emile is left behind and eventually re-imprisoned. While on the outside, Louis starts selling record players on the streets and in a brief montage of the film, eventually builds himself an empire, where he is the president of a company that manufactures record players. Louis is now very rich and has many men that work for him, while Emile is still held captive in the prison.

Eventually Emile's ticket comes up and when he tries to hang himself from his prison window, the window breaks out and he's doesn't waste any time escaping. After swooning over a girl he happens upon, Emile makes his way to Louis' factory (without the knowledge that it's owned by Louis) and lands himself a job on the assembly line. He quickly realizes that not only does the girl, for which he has fallen in love with, work there, but Louis is the head cheese.

The one thing that really irked me the most about this film was the lack of subtitles in most areas of the film. The subtitles are there for the important dialogue, but otherwise they are missing and it really took me out of the movie. The quality of this film was also really bad, as the picture was VERY grainy and really bothered me at times. The gags in the movie were great, as we get a lot of one mishap leading to another and so on and so forth. Also, a lot of accidentally eluding danger and gags that normally I would enjoy, but the characters and the plot of this film just really didn't attach themselves at all to me and I just could not get into this film whatsoever. I had really high hopes for this one and it didn't take long for those high hopes to be dashed and within the last twenty minutes of the film, I was really ready to just check out, but I stuck in there and trudged my way to the finale.

RATING: 2/10 I gave it a few points for the gags that I referred to, but thats all I could muster for this one.

NEXT UP: Le Million...Still searching for that "Perfect 10" since my return and hopefully this second of my Rene Clair double feature can deliver.

December 15, 2009 10:12pm