A Nous la Liberté (Liberty for Us) Reviews
Combustible Celluloid
Compared to his contemporaries Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo, Clair was a minor talent, though both of these films do contain innovative uses of sound mixed with silent film.
Top CriticA period piece in the best sense.
DVDJournal.com
...displays Clair's mastery of artful whimsy by mixing sound (especially song), sweet-faced storytelling, and visual skill.
It's well worth a look today as simultaneously vindicating Clair's former high reputation and his subsequent expulsion from most critical pantheons.
Classic Film and Television
Influential French comedy about a world beyond work.
EmanuelLevy.Com
One of French director Rene Clair's great films, this 1931 poignant exploration of the working conditions of industrial laborers was nominated for the Interior Decoration Oscar.
Full Review
| Original Score: A
Low IQ Canadian
The French have no equal when it comes to perfectly aligned bottom-kicking, showing revulsion at the ill-breeding of others, or performing semi-socialist slapstick.
TheMovieReport.com
All of the layers are brought together through Clair's clever use of sound and image.
About.com
Its themes are couched in so much wit and silliness that it doesn't take a communist to enjoy it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
A Nous, la Liberté is assuredly different from any other screen feature. It bristles with strange originality.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)
Wildly funny, endlessly creative, experimental and utterly charming, it is a too-often overlooked classic.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Apollo Guide
Deserves to come out from under the long shadows cast by Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, and bask in the adulation of a whole new generation of filmgoers.
Full Review
| Original Score: 81/100
Q Network Film Desk
a delightfully radical farce about freeing oneself from the controls of social and economic oppression
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Reno Gazette-Journal
If the notion of a 1931 semi-silent French movie doesn't scare you off, this minor masterpiece might be worth checking out. Political historians and film fanatics will be especially interested.
| Original Score: A
Filmcritic.com
Pioneering... extravagant.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
TV Guide's Movie Guide
This classic satire on the dehumanization of industrial workers is one of Rene Clair's greatest achievements.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
