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A Nous La Liberte - Criterion Collection

A Nous La Liberte - Criterion Collection

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: ...
Review: ... The film is fully intact as Clair intended, and the deleted scenes are available for us to see. The circumstances of these cuts by Clair are fully explained on the DVD's deleted scene menu pages (Clair cut the scenes between the original release and the 1950 reissue), so it is totally inaccurate to say that the film has been "mutilated" since it was the director who made the cuts. The reviewer from Lincoln needs to pay a little more attention to history and stop writing such misleading gibberish.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Nous La Liberte
Review: A brilliant, elegant and sparkling French comedy. It resembles Chaplin's Modern Times, but is in many ways even funnier in depicting the similarity between factory and prison.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Mutilation of a Classic
Review: Just a response to another reviewer; yes, this is Clair's 1950 recut of the film. But the recut is ill-advised, and is generally considered by most historians as a prime example of someone far removed from the circumstances of the film's actual production butchering their own work.

Is this the 1931 classic, intact, as Clair originally intended?

No, it is a recut, which most critics feel strongly is a disgrace.

Do NOT buy this DVD; get the uncut version on VHS while you still can. Once again, Criterion should have restored the original version, rather than presenting this cut version; anything less violates entirely the spirit of the original film.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An Unquestionable Classic
Review: Perhaps the most elegantly rendered feature film of the very early days of sound production (barring, perhaps, Chaplin's CITY LIGHTS), Clair's classic is such a seemingly effortless blend of romantic melancholy, bitter social criticism and gentle surrealism, that its many aesthetic qualities tend to overshadow the film's astounding technological innovations in the poetics of sound.
The fact that Criterion has thrown Clair's short film ENTR'ACTE onto the disc is reason enough to buy the dvd. The transfers of both the feature and the short are of superlative quality. It's an invaluable release.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Beware- Mutilation of a Classic
Review: This is an abridged version of Clair's 1931 masterpiece, with two key sequences cut, and added to the DVD as "extras" in beat up 16mm prints, when original nitrate material is readily available. The two sequences in question are the singing flowers who serenade Emile outside the factory; and Emile's quest for romance in a Parisian cafe. All in all, this is about 10 minutes of material! It is impossible to overstate the effect that the elimination of these two scenes has on the film as a whole; it destroys, in large part, much of the magic of the film.

On the plus side, the subtitles are vastly superior to any other version available, and the transfer of the feature (minus the cuts) is superb....but with the cuts, you're really not getting the film. Criterion made a serious error with this one.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great musical comedy
Review: This review is for the Critetion DVD editon of the film

À nous la liberté , also known as "Liberty for Us" is another very nice film by Rene clair. The film is a satire of life working in a factory.

It is about an assembly line worker who falls in love with a secratary who works at the factory. Theare is some slapstick humor in the film and has several scenes where the characters sing. The film is considered a musical as well because of this.

The DVD has some great special features.

There is an sudio presentation of the plagarism lawsuit against Charlie Chaplin over his film "Modern Times". There is also a 1998 video interview with Bronja Clair and two deleted scenes.

Finally, Rene Clair's 1924 surrealist film Entr'acte is also on the DVD. It is a short film about a funeral where pepole chase a runaway wagon carrying the casket. Some scenes are played in a very cool slow motion which is better seen than read about.

I highly recommend this film!


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