À nous la liberté(Liberty for Us)
France (1931): Comedy
René Clair's famous satirical comedy about two ex-convicts, one of whom works his way up from salesman to factory owner, where he oversees a highly mechanised operation where the workers are reduced to mere automatons. Blackmailed over his past, he joins up with his old cellmate, and the pair take to the road as tramps.
Clair sees life for the worker under capitalism as identical with the life of a convict in prison - both systems seek to stamp out or rigidly order humanity, turn people into socially acceptable machines. With humanity so thoroughly contained, it is not surprising that it should be a fundamental human emotion - love - that causes anarchic chaos in this system. À nous la liberté is frequently acknowledged as the inspiration for Chaplin's Modern Times (1936). (IMDb)
1 nomination
· Interior Decoration 1931-32: Lazare Meerson