ChiaroScuro DVD-Collection
Alphabetically sorted by Director's last name
Total number of titles: 1397
Last updated: 09 Feb 2007
(Zwischenspiel [de])
France 1924
d: René Clair
Criterion (Region 0 us)
France 1924
d: René Clair
Criterion (Region 0 us)
sc: Francis Picabia, René Clair
c: Jimmy Berliet (b/w)
m: Erik Satie
p: Rolf de Maré (Les Ballets Suedois)
w: Jean Börlin, Inge Frïss, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Darius Milhaud
pr: 01 Jun 1924
c: Jimmy Berliet (b/w)
m: Erik Satie
p: Rolf de Maré (Les Ballets Suedois)
w: Jean Börlin, Inge Frïss, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Darius Milhaud
pr: 01 Jun 1924
rt: 20:17 min
dvd-rl: 20 Aug 2002
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Music Score Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
st: French intertitles; English subtitles
supp: Supplement only to "À nous la liberté" (Criterion, René Clair, France 1931)
Restauration by the Cinémathèque Française and Pathé Films
dvd-rl: 20 Aug 2002
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Music Score Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
st: French intertitles; English subtitles
supp: Supplement only to "À nous la liberté" (Criterion, René Clair, France 1931)
Restauration by the Cinémathèque Française and Pathé Films
A classic French silent of dance and Dada, this film was produced by French dance company Les Ballet Suedois, and stars them as well, mourning the loss of their star dancer Jean Börlin. An outrageous funeral procession is mounted, with the hearse being pulled by a camel. On the way up an incline, the hearse breaks loose, and all the mourner/dancers give terribly graceful chase. When the hearse finally stops, the "deceased" rises again for a terrific solo. Entr'acte is as silly as it is surreal and was obviously a lot of fun to make, since almost everybody behind the camera gets to take their turn in front, including Erik Satie, who provided the soundtrack.
— John Voorhees, AMG
•••••
Francis Picabia engagierte ihn daraufhin als Regisseur für den kurzen Film "Zwischenspiel", der als Zwischenspiel seines dadaistischen Balletts "Relâche", zu dem Eric Satie die Musik geschrieben hatte, eingesetzt werden sollte. Das Personal des Films bestand vor allem aus Vertretern der Pariser Avantgarde, und neben Satie und Picabia selbst traten auch Marcel Duchamp und Man Ray auf. Der kurze Film entspricht weniger dem "cinéma pur", das sein Bruder Henri Chomette und er selbst propagierten, er ist eher ein dadaistisches, avantgardistisches Feuerwerk von ungewöhnlichen Ideen und filmischen Tricks.
— Peter Ruckriegl
— John Voorhees, AMG
•••••
Francis Picabia engagierte ihn daraufhin als Regisseur für den kurzen Film "Zwischenspiel", der als Zwischenspiel seines dadaistischen Balletts "Relâche", zu dem Eric Satie die Musik geschrieben hatte, eingesetzt werden sollte. Das Personal des Films bestand vor allem aus Vertretern der Pariser Avantgarde, und neben Satie und Picabia selbst traten auch Marcel Duchamp und Man Ray auf. Der kurze Film entspricht weniger dem "cinéma pur", das sein Bruder Henri Chomette und er selbst propagierten, er ist eher ein dadaistisches, avantgardistisches Feuerwerk von ungewöhnlichen Ideen und filmischen Tricks.
— Peter Ruckriegl
(Das schlafende Paris [de])
France 1925
d: René Clair
Criterion (Region 0 us)
France 1925
d: René Clair
Criterion (Region 0 us)
sc: René Clair
c: Maurice Desfassiaux, Paul Guichard (b/w)
e: René Clair
pd: André Foy, Claude Autant-Lara
m: Jacques Wiener
p: Henri Diamant-Berger (Films Diamant)
w: Henri Rollan, Martinelli, Albert Préjean, Madeleine Rodrigue, Myla Seller, Antoine Stacquet, Marcel Vallée
pr: 06 Feb 1925
c: Maurice Desfassiaux, Paul Guichard (b/w)
e: René Clair
pd: André Foy, Claude Autant-Lara
m: Jacques Wiener
p: Henri Diamant-Berger (Films Diamant)
w: Henri Rollan, Martinelli, Albert Préjean, Madeleine Rodrigue, Myla Seller, Antoine Stacquet, Marcel Vallée
pr: 06 Feb 1925
rt: 34:37 min
dvd-rl: 24 Sep 2002
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Piano Score Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
st: French intertitles; English subtitles
supp: Supplement only to "Sous les toits de Paris" (Criterion, René Clair, France 1930)
dvd-rl: 24 Sep 2002
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Piano Score Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
st: French intertitles; English subtitles
supp: Supplement only to "Sous les toits de Paris" (Criterion, René Clair, France 1930)
The first feature of director-writer-novelist-Dadaist René Clair resembles his better-known short 'Entr'acte' in its manic comic invention and its all-round energetic absurdity. It starts out with a crazed inventor perfecting a ray that suspends animation throughout Paris, and then has a great deal of fun tracing the paths of a handful of 'survivors' through the frozen city. The prolific jokes about motion and stasis are fundamentally movie concept gags, and they relate directly to contemporary avant-garde film concerns.
— TR, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Seine Experimentierfreudigkeit zeigte sich bereits in seinem ersten Film "Das schlafende Paris", einem Science-Fiction-/Abenteuerfilm, in dem er mit einfachen Mitteln wie Filmrücklauf oder Stillstand als Verfremdungen arbeitete und damit die Aufmerksamkeit der Dadaisten und Surrealisten auf sich zog.
— Peter Ruckriegl
•••••
... the author of "Paris qui dort" brings out the evolutions of his aerial creatures by locking them in an immobile city. In truth, accelerating the rhythm matters less than isolating the precise instant at which it slows down, re-establishing a situation in which movement is still possible. We measure all the ambivalence in Clair's thought, that never does anything but attack a flaw, a gap, a broken contract in the free exercise of fiction.
— Noël Herpe, Senses of Cinema 2001
— TR, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Seine Experimentierfreudigkeit zeigte sich bereits in seinem ersten Film "Das schlafende Paris", einem Science-Fiction-/Abenteuerfilm, in dem er mit einfachen Mitteln wie Filmrücklauf oder Stillstand als Verfremdungen arbeitete und damit die Aufmerksamkeit der Dadaisten und Surrealisten auf sich zog.
— Peter Ruckriegl
•••••
... the author of "Paris qui dort" brings out the evolutions of his aerial creatures by locking them in an immobile city. In truth, accelerating the rhythm matters less than isolating the precise instant at which it slows down, re-establishing a situation in which movement is still possible. We measure all the ambivalence in Clair's thought, that never does anything but attack a flaw, a gap, a broken contract in the free exercise of fiction.
— Noël Herpe, Senses of Cinema 2001
(Unter den Dächern von Paris [de] • Under the Roofs of Paris [en])
France 1930
d: René Clair
Criterion (Region 0 us)
France 1930
d: René Clair
Criterion (Region 0 us)
sc: René Clair
c: Georges Périnal, Georges Raulet (b/w)
e: René Le Hénaff
pd: Lazare Meerson
m: Raoul Moretti, René Nazelles (songs); Armand Bernard (arranger)
p: Franck Clifford (Films Sonores Tobis)
w: Albert Préjean, Pola Illéry, Edmond T. Gréville, Bill Bocket, Gaston Modot, Raymond Aimos, Thomy Bourdelle, Paul Ollivier, Jane Pierson
pr: 28 Apr 1930
c: Georges Périnal, Georges Raulet (b/w)
e: René Le Hénaff
pd: Lazare Meerson
m: Raoul Moretti, René Nazelles (songs); Armand Bernard (arranger)
p: Franck Clifford (Films Sonores Tobis)
w: Albert Préjean, Pola Illéry, Edmond T. Gréville, Bill Bocket, Gaston Modot, Raymond Aimos, Thomy Bourdelle, Paul Ollivier, Jane Pierson
pr: 28 Apr 1930
rt: 92:10 min
dvd-rl: 24 Sep 2002
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: French Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
st: English
supp: The Criterion Collection #161
This digital transfer was created from a 35mm composite fine-grain master. The sound restoration was undertaken by Lobster Films. The soundtrack was mastered at 24-bit
• Deleted Scene (3:10 min)
• René Clair’s silent film "Paris qui dort" (1925, 34:37 min)
• A 1966 BBC-TV interview with René Clair by Dilys Powell (17:42 min)
• Trailer (5:09 min)
• Booklet with Liner Essay by Luc Sante
dvd-rl: 24 Sep 2002
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: French Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
st: English
supp: The Criterion Collection #161
This digital transfer was created from a 35mm composite fine-grain master. The sound restoration was undertaken by Lobster Films. The soundtrack was mastered at 24-bit
• Deleted Scene (3:10 min)
• René Clair’s silent film "Paris qui dort" (1925, 34:37 min)
• A 1966 BBC-TV interview with René Clair by Dilys Powell (17:42 min)
• Trailer (5:09 min)
• Booklet with Liner Essay by Luc Sante
From its graceful opening pan across the (studio recreated) rooftops of the title to the multiple variations on its naggingly memorable theme song, the enchantment of Clair's first talkie has remained intact. Even the slight awkwardness of the semi-synchronised soundtrack, as scratchy as if played on a wind-up phonograph, complements its nostalgic, almost anachronistic visuals. That, plus Lazare Meerson's elegantly spare sets, George van Parys' jingly score, and the naïve if still affecting performances, make for a miniaturist masterpiece.
— GAd, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Clair's first sound film, a tender exploration of love and friendship in the streets and garrets of Paris, traces the joys and tribulations of a Parisian street-singer (Albert Prejean) who falls in love with a beautiful midinette (Pola Illery). Albert's life takes him in and out of streets, bistros, bars, beds, and even jail as Clair magically creates through a sort of poetic realism a fascinating portrait of the whole mythos of the Parisian streetsinger.... In his mixed caution and inventiveness, he turned this picture into a delightful experiment with sound in which music plays a much more important role than conversation.
— PFA
•••••
"Unter den Dächern von Paris", einer der ersten französischen Tonfilme, stellte noch eine Mischung aus Ton- und Stummfilm dar und spielte im Milieu der kleinen Leute, wie es zuvor schon Jacques Feyder in seinen Filmen gezeigt hatte. Hier und in den ein Jahr später folgenden "Die Million" und "Es lebe die Freiheit" sowie in "Der 14. Juli" (1932) spielte Clair mit den unterschiedlichen Möglichkeiten, die ihm der gezielte Einsatz von Geräuschen, von Sprache und Musik bot. Noch war ihm das Bild wichtiger als der Ton; die Handlung wurde vor allem durch Bilder vermittelt und vorangetrieben, der Ton aber - und das bedeutete in diesen Filmen vor allem die Musik und das Chanson - trat jetzt unterstützend hinzu. Schon in "Unter den Dächern von Paris" setzte er die neuen Möglichkeiten virtuos ein, zugleich aber spielte er mit ihnen. Durch einfache Mittel - das Schließen eines Fensters, das den Ton aussperrt und das Bild verstummen lässt; das Löschen des Lichtes während eines Gespräches, das weitergeführt wird - gelingt es ihm, den akustischen vom visuellen Raum zu trennen und wieder zusammenzufügen.
"Unter den Dächern von Paris" ist dem Stummfilm noch eng verbunden, und zugleich ist in ihm eine leichte Wehmut zu verspüren, das Wissen um den Verlust einer eigenen Kunst. Diese leise Trauer findet sich auch im Thema des Films: wenige Tage aus dem Leben eines Straßensängers, der die neuesten Chansons auf der Straße vorträgt und vom Verkauf der Texte und Noten lebt. Wie der Stummfilm mit der Entwicklung der Tonspur aus den Kinos verschwunden ist, werden auch die Sänger auf den Straßen verdrängt durch Grammophone und Radios.
— Peter Ruckriegl
•••••
In that era, the start of the worldwide financial crash, important movies tended to be set in fantasy realms of impossible wealth. Clair’s "Paris" was, in a way, no less fantastic—every street and square, every tenement, garret, dancehall, and café was designed by the great Lazare Meerson and built in the studio. But its characters, who live on the border between ill-paid labor and petty crime, were both instantly recognizable the world around and imbued with romance by the magic of Paris. In the decade that followed, that setting and those kinds of characters were to constitute the fundament of the French cinematic style called “poetic realism,” a principal architect of which was Marcel Carné, an assistant director on "Under the Roofs of Paris". By then this picture may have seemed slight, airy, devoid of tragedy. To us, now, it looks exhilaratingly fresh, a cavalcade of inventive turns, a sprightly little confection poised just to the right of "The Threepenny Opera" and a bit to the left of "42nd Street".
— Luc Sante
— GAd, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Clair's first sound film, a tender exploration of love and friendship in the streets and garrets of Paris, traces the joys and tribulations of a Parisian street-singer (Albert Prejean) who falls in love with a beautiful midinette (Pola Illery). Albert's life takes him in and out of streets, bistros, bars, beds, and even jail as Clair magically creates through a sort of poetic realism a fascinating portrait of the whole mythos of the Parisian streetsinger.... In his mixed caution and inventiveness, he turned this picture into a delightful experiment with sound in which music plays a much more important role than conversation.
— PFA
•••••
"Unter den Dächern von Paris", einer der ersten französischen Tonfilme, stellte noch eine Mischung aus Ton- und Stummfilm dar und spielte im Milieu der kleinen Leute, wie es zuvor schon Jacques Feyder in seinen Filmen gezeigt hatte. Hier und in den ein Jahr später folgenden "Die Million" und "Es lebe die Freiheit" sowie in "Der 14. Juli" (1932) spielte Clair mit den unterschiedlichen Möglichkeiten, die ihm der gezielte Einsatz von Geräuschen, von Sprache und Musik bot. Noch war ihm das Bild wichtiger als der Ton; die Handlung wurde vor allem durch Bilder vermittelt und vorangetrieben, der Ton aber - und das bedeutete in diesen Filmen vor allem die Musik und das Chanson - trat jetzt unterstützend hinzu. Schon in "Unter den Dächern von Paris" setzte er die neuen Möglichkeiten virtuos ein, zugleich aber spielte er mit ihnen. Durch einfache Mittel - das Schließen eines Fensters, das den Ton aussperrt und das Bild verstummen lässt; das Löschen des Lichtes während eines Gespräches, das weitergeführt wird - gelingt es ihm, den akustischen vom visuellen Raum zu trennen und wieder zusammenzufügen.
"Unter den Dächern von Paris" ist dem Stummfilm noch eng verbunden, und zugleich ist in ihm eine leichte Wehmut zu verspüren, das Wissen um den Verlust einer eigenen Kunst. Diese leise Trauer findet sich auch im Thema des Films: wenige Tage aus dem Leben eines Straßensängers, der die neuesten Chansons auf der Straße vorträgt und vom Verkauf der Texte und Noten lebt. Wie der Stummfilm mit der Entwicklung der Tonspur aus den Kinos verschwunden ist, werden auch die Sänger auf den Straßen verdrängt durch Grammophone und Radios.
— Peter Ruckriegl
•••••
In that era, the start of the worldwide financial crash, important movies tended to be set in fantasy realms of impossible wealth. Clair’s "Paris" was, in a way, no less fantastic—every street and square, every tenement, garret, dancehall, and café was designed by the great Lazare Meerson and built in the studio. But its characters, who live on the border between ill-paid labor and petty crime, were both instantly recognizable the world around and imbued with romance by the magic of Paris. In the decade that followed, that setting and those kinds of characters were to constitute the fundament of the French cinematic style called “poetic realism,” a principal architect of which was Marcel Carné, an assistant director on "Under the Roofs of Paris". By then this picture may have seemed slight, airy, devoid of tragedy. To us, now, it looks exhilaratingly fresh, a cavalcade of inventive turns, a sprightly little confection poised just to the right of "The Threepenny Opera" and a bit to the left of "42nd Street".
— Luc Sante
(Die Million [de] • Le Million [en])
France 1931
d: René Clair
Criterion (Region 0 us)
France 1931
d: René Clair
Criterion (Region 0 us)
sc: René Clair (based on a musical play by Georges Berr, M. Guillemaud)
c: Georges Périnal (b/w)
e: René Le Hénaff
pd: Lazare Meerson
m: Georges Van Parys, Armand Bernard, Philippe Parès
p: Franck Clifford (Films Sonores Tobis)
w: Jean-Louis Allibert, Annabella, Raymond Cordy, Vanda Gréville, René Lefèvre, Paul Ollivier, Gabrielle Rosny, Constantin Siroesco, Odette Talazac
pr: 15 Apr 1931
c: Georges Périnal (b/w)
e: René Le Hénaff
pd: Lazare Meerson
m: Georges Van Parys, Armand Bernard, Philippe Parès
p: Franck Clifford (Films Sonores Tobis)
w: Jean-Louis Allibert, Annabella, Raymond Cordy, Vanda Gréville, René Lefèvre, Paul Ollivier, Gabrielle Rosny, Constantin Siroesco, Odette Talazac
pr: 15 Apr 1931
rt: 81:21 min
dvd-rl: 16 Mai 2000
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: French Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
st: English
supp: The Criterion Collection #72
This new digital transfer was created from a 35mm composite fine-grain master positive on the high definition Spirit Datacine
• A gallery of production photos
• A rare American 1959 TV interview with René Clair (9:14 min)
• Booklet with Liner Essay by Elliott Stein
dvd-rl: 16 Mai 2000
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: French Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
st: English
supp: The Criterion Collection #72
This new digital transfer was created from a 35mm composite fine-grain master positive on the high definition Spirit Datacine
• A gallery of production photos
• A rare American 1959 TV interview with René Clair (9:14 min)
• Booklet with Liner Essay by Elliott Stein
Classic early René Clair, this is the one about a hunt for a lost lottery ticket which ends in a football scrimmage on an opera stage, foresh adowing A Night at the Opera. It features asynchronous sound and other experimental devices of the time. Luckily it's lively enough to survive the worst textbook bromides: the playing, the delightful music, and the dialogue (half-sung, half-spoken) all mesh together in a way no one but Clair ever quite matched.
— GB, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
"Le Million" is a bouyant fantasy that depends on a unique blend of music and romance, accomplished with great visual resourcefulness in the finest René Clair tradition. The story involves a search for a winning lottery ticket left by mistake in the pocket of a coat taken to the pawnshop. An impoverished painter leads the wild chase, followed by his creditors, his false friends and their girlfriends, a few crooks, and bringing up the lead, the cops. Many scenes are hysterically funny, others are quite moving, but the finale is in a class by itself, a burlesque of grand opera that makes the Marx Brothers look like Abbott and Costello. One of the first screen operettas, "Le Million" preserves the spirit of the original stage musical in a style that is entirely cinematic. Clair noted, before the film was completed, "It is obvious that the flow [of the play] is based on words... I am hoping, however, to preserve the irreality of vaudeville by replacing dialogue with music and songs. I am pleased to have discovered this operatic formula in which everybody sings except the main character and I have developed musical elements directly based on the action." Lazare Meerson's sets for "Le Million" influenced the future course of art direction in film.
— PFA
•••••
At the onset of the sound era, French cinema was in the doldrums, economically and artistically, until Clair’s ebullient early talkies proved a great success worldwide and put French sound film on the map. All of them take place in an enchanting Paris, marvelously designed by the great art director Lazare Meerson, and lit by Georges Périnal with exquisite soft-toned atmospheric cinematography.
In Clair’s magical city of small cobbled courtyards, of bistros, drunkards and street-singers, and skylines dotted with chimney pots at odd angles, there are no villains. An unsentimental love of humanity permeates every frame, operating with members of all levels of society—merchants, artists, young lovers, criminals and gendarmes. ...
The Clair style, most brilliantly exemplified in "Le Million", is a synthesis, a perfect fusion of sound, dialogue, camera placement and editing. The mood may be ironic, sad or happy, but music and song are never far away. At first Clair was skeptical of the value of sound—he called it “an unnatural creation, just useful for canned theater,” and detested the loquacious movies of the early talkie era, with their slavish devotion to dialogue. Soon, however, he altered his views: realizing the creatively non-realistic use to which the soundtrack could be put, he employed sound contrapuntally rather than synchronously, divorcing the literal relationship of sound and image, and never permitting the words and pictures to duplicate each other. ... While a good deal of European cinema of the 1930s has not stood the test of time, "Le Million" hasn’t aged a bit—seeing it today, nearly 70 years after its release, one still cannot help feeling exhilarated by its sheer audacity and grace.
— Elliott Stein
— GB, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
"Le Million" is a bouyant fantasy that depends on a unique blend of music and romance, accomplished with great visual resourcefulness in the finest René Clair tradition. The story involves a search for a winning lottery ticket left by mistake in the pocket of a coat taken to the pawnshop. An impoverished painter leads the wild chase, followed by his creditors, his false friends and their girlfriends, a few crooks, and bringing up the lead, the cops. Many scenes are hysterically funny, others are quite moving, but the finale is in a class by itself, a burlesque of grand opera that makes the Marx Brothers look like Abbott and Costello. One of the first screen operettas, "Le Million" preserves the spirit of the original stage musical in a style that is entirely cinematic. Clair noted, before the film was completed, "It is obvious that the flow [of the play] is based on words... I am hoping, however, to preserve the irreality of vaudeville by replacing dialogue with music and songs. I am pleased to have discovered this operatic formula in which everybody sings except the main character and I have developed musical elements directly based on the action." Lazare Meerson's sets for "Le Million" influenced the future course of art direction in film.
— PFA
•••••
At the onset of the sound era, French cinema was in the doldrums, economically and artistically, until Clair’s ebullient early talkies proved a great success worldwide and put French sound film on the map. All of them take place in an enchanting Paris, marvelously designed by the great art director Lazare Meerson, and lit by Georges Périnal with exquisite soft-toned atmospheric cinematography.
In Clair’s magical city of small cobbled courtyards, of bistros, drunkards and street-singers, and skylines dotted with chimney pots at odd angles, there are no villains. An unsentimental love of humanity permeates every frame, operating with members of all levels of society—merchants, artists, young lovers, criminals and gendarmes. ...
The Clair style, most brilliantly exemplified in "Le Million", is a synthesis, a perfect fusion of sound, dialogue, camera placement and editing. The mood may be ironic, sad or happy, but music and song are never far away. At first Clair was skeptical of the value of sound—he called it “an unnatural creation, just useful for canned theater,” and detested the loquacious movies of the early talkie era, with their slavish devotion to dialogue. Soon, however, he altered his views: realizing the creatively non-realistic use to which the soundtrack could be put, he employed sound contrapuntally rather than synchronously, divorcing the literal relationship of sound and image, and never permitting the words and pictures to duplicate each other. ... While a good deal of European cinema of the 1930s has not stood the test of time, "Le Million" hasn’t aged a bit—seeing it today, nearly 70 years after its release, one still cannot help feeling exhilarated by its sheer audacity and grace.
— Elliott Stein
(Es lebe die Freiheit [de])
France 1931
d: René Clair
Criterion (Region 0 us)
France 1931
d: René Clair
Criterion (Region 0 us)
sc: René Clair
c: Georges Périnal (b/w)
e: René Le Hénaff; René Clair (uncredited)
pd: Lazare Meerson
m: Georges Auric
p: Franck Clifford (Films Sonores Tobis)
w: Raymond Cordy, Henri Marchand, Paul Ollivier, André Michaud, Rolla France, Germaine Aussey, Léon Lorin, William Burke, Vincent Hyspa, Jacques Shelly, Marguerite De Morlaye, Maximilienne, Ritou Lancyle, Léon Courtois, Albert Broquin
pr: 18 Dez 1931
c: Georges Périnal (b/w)
e: René Le Hénaff; René Clair (uncredited)
pd: Lazare Meerson
m: Georges Auric
p: Franck Clifford (Films Sonores Tobis)
w: Raymond Cordy, Henri Marchand, Paul Ollivier, André Michaud, Rolla France, Germaine Aussey, Léon Lorin, William Burke, Vincent Hyspa, Jacques Shelly, Marguerite De Morlaye, Maximilienne, Ritou Lancyle, Léon Courtois, Albert Broquin
pr: 18 Dez 1931
rt: 83:24 min
dvd-rl: 20 Aug 2002
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: French Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
st: English
supp: The Criterion Collection #161
This digital transfer was created from a 35mm composite fine-grain master. The soundtrack was mastered at 24-bit
• 2 Deleted scenes: 'The Singing Flower' (1:50 min); 'The Magic Park' (4:39 min)
• "Entr'acte" (1924), the short surrealist masterpiece by Clair and artist Francis Picabia (20:17 min)
• 1998 Video interview with Madame Bronja Clair (15:04 min)
• Film historian David Robinson on the Tobis lawsuit against Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times" (2002, 22:20 min)
• Booklet with Liner Essay by Michael Atkinson
dvd-rl: 20 Aug 2002
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: French Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
st: English
supp: The Criterion Collection #161
This digital transfer was created from a 35mm composite fine-grain master. The soundtrack was mastered at 24-bit
• 2 Deleted scenes: 'The Singing Flower' (1:50 min); 'The Magic Park' (4:39 min)
• "Entr'acte" (1924), the short surrealist masterpiece by Clair and artist Francis Picabia (20:17 min)
• 1998 Video interview with Madame Bronja Clair (15:04 min)
• Film historian David Robinson on the Tobis lawsuit against Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times" (2002, 22:20 min)
• Booklet with Liner Essay by Michael Atkinson
With its barrel-organ score and mechanistic choreography (rather than direction) of actors, this jolly satire on automation may be dated, but no more so now than in its own time. Though it pales in comparison with the anarchic, even scatological, vulgarity of Chaplin's "Modern Times", which it influenced, it's well worth a look today as simultaneously vindicating Clair's former high reputation and his subsequent expulsion from most critical pantheons.
— GAd, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
René Clair was one of the first directors to use sound selectively: in his films, spoken dialogue, incidental noises, and especially music all were harnessed to create humor or suspense, and sound was frequently omitted entirely rather than used unnecessarily. "A Nous la liberté", like Chaplin's "Modern Times", which it influenced (just as Clair's characters were influenced by Chaplin's before them), is an attack on automation which does not hesitate to compare factory life with prison life in futuristic sets designed by Lazare Meerson. The story depicts the adventures of two ex-convicts: Louis, now the owner of a large phonograph company, and Emile, a confirmed freedom-loving vagabond. Clair combines fantasy with irony, whimsy with wistful pessimism, musical comedy with fine-tuned slapstick to create a satire of the highest order.
— PFA
•••••
Mit "Es lebe die Freiheit" zeichnete er das satirische Porträt einer industriellen Gesellschaft, in der die Menschen den Maschinen unterstellt sind und das Singen verlernt haben. Die Helden des Films sind die Häftlinge Louis und Émile, deren Tagesablauf von monotoner Fließbandarbeit gezeichnet ist. Sie versuchen, gemeinsam zu fliehen, doch nur Louis gelingt die Flucht. Es folgt ein rasanter gesellschaftlicher Aufstieg vom einfachen Straßenhändler zum Besitzer von zahlreichen Grammophonfabriken. Louis führt in seinen Fabriken dieselben Arbeitsmethoden ein, die er aus dem Gefängnis kannte. Nachdem er Émile wiedertrifft, erkennt er nach und nach die Fesseln, die er sich und anderen auflegte. Er schenkt seine Fabriken den Arbeitern und zieht mit Émile - "À nous la liberté" singend - über die Landstraße. Mit dem pantomimischen Spiel seiner Protagonisten, den Verfolgungsjagden und Slapstick-Elementen erinnert der Film auch mit seiner anarchischen Einstellung an Clairs erste Filme, vor allem an Zwischenspiel. Die sozialkritischen Komponenten werden dabei in einer romantisch-anarchistischen Utopie aufgelöst. Trotz der Zensur, der er in einigen europäischen Ländern zum Opfer fiel, hatte der Film großen Erfolg und beeinflusste unter anderem Chaplin, der Es lebe die Freiheit in einigen Teilen zum Vorbild für "Moderne Zeiten" (1936) nahm.
— Peter Ruckriegl
•••••
In one of the most brilliant comedy sequences in cinema history the tension builds as they hold their dignified positions while banknotes from Louis's misplaced hoard drift past on the breeze. The speechmaker drones on, more money descends, the breeze increases, the tension increases. In a contest between greed and honour you know which is going to be the winner: the top-hatted assembly explodes into a disorderly rabble (unlike prisoners and factory workers who are orderly rabble) chasing a blizzard of banknotes.
Does this synopsis make "À nous la liberté" sound like a left wing polemic? It isn't. Despite Clair recalling that he was "close to the Left" in those days, he ended up a member of the Academie Francaise! Political economy was only the raw material of this film, comedy was the product. Indeed, Louis's last act as magnate - nothing less than solution of the class war - is so unbelievable (not fantastic, not impossible, just unbelievable) that the film was banned in the USSR.
"À nous la liberté" is a landmark in the history of film comedy because it's funny, yet it is too satirical for farce, too farcical for satire. And it is a landmark in the history of sound film. Back in 1931 when almost all film directors in every country were cautiously using the new technology as a recording medium, Clair was exploring it as a creative medium. This was in addition to his use of Auric's music. The composition of film music and the sensitivity of its application to the narrative are different arts, not always in harmony(!). "À nous la liberté" set a new standard for them in the formative years of sound film.
No account of this film would be complete without praise for the production design by Lazare Meerson. In a studio-made film most of what meets our eye (though we may not focus on it) is the work of the designer. Meerson's vision of prison and factory, streetscape and salon, commands our attention, provokes our imagination, then yields precedence to the other arts of the narrative.
The exact nature of Clair's humour is problematic. He doesn't treat his characters as puppets, and part of his charm is that he bestows idiosyncrasy on characters who are little more than stereotypes. But he doesn't convey that affection for his characters which we relish in the films of another comic writer-director, Preston Sturges. At the risk of oxymoron, Clair's comedy has great exuberance but not a lot of joy. That doesn't make them less funny, just colder - what John Russell Taylor called "demented clockwork."
— John Flaus, Senses of Cinema October 2000
•••••
Happiness—how might one attain it? With factories? "À Nous la Liberté" is in a sense a definitively radical film. It may be tamer than Vigo’s preadolescent assault, but its arena is adult. It may be less libidinous than Buñuel’s wild ride, but its vectors are less caricatured, more directly representative of actual social forces (although, like "L’Age d’Or", Liberté is largely prefigured on the frustration of romantic desire—Marchand’s puppyish Everyman falls for a secretary after a single glimpse, but his pursuit of her has all the gravity of a Harpo Marx fixation.) Whereas both the supposedly antithetical ideologies of capitalism and socialism agree that work is indeed liberty, Clair argues that freedom is freedom, for the individual to define individually. Despite the memorable late sequence wherein a crowd of top-hatted corporate vultures scramble through a courtyard after wind-blown money, Clair’s target isn’t the nouveau riche, but the very notion of social control. Still, "À Nous la Liberté" isn’t a critical film—it’s a celebration, a living, life-is-a-song proof of the alternatives. Better to own nothing in a field of singing flowers than to sell your life for the right to live.
— Michael Atkinson
— GAd, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
René Clair was one of the first directors to use sound selectively: in his films, spoken dialogue, incidental noises, and especially music all were harnessed to create humor or suspense, and sound was frequently omitted entirely rather than used unnecessarily. "A Nous la liberté", like Chaplin's "Modern Times", which it influenced (just as Clair's characters were influenced by Chaplin's before them), is an attack on automation which does not hesitate to compare factory life with prison life in futuristic sets designed by Lazare Meerson. The story depicts the adventures of two ex-convicts: Louis, now the owner of a large phonograph company, and Emile, a confirmed freedom-loving vagabond. Clair combines fantasy with irony, whimsy with wistful pessimism, musical comedy with fine-tuned slapstick to create a satire of the highest order.
— PFA
•••••
Mit "Es lebe die Freiheit" zeichnete er das satirische Porträt einer industriellen Gesellschaft, in der die Menschen den Maschinen unterstellt sind und das Singen verlernt haben. Die Helden des Films sind die Häftlinge Louis und Émile, deren Tagesablauf von monotoner Fließbandarbeit gezeichnet ist. Sie versuchen, gemeinsam zu fliehen, doch nur Louis gelingt die Flucht. Es folgt ein rasanter gesellschaftlicher Aufstieg vom einfachen Straßenhändler zum Besitzer von zahlreichen Grammophonfabriken. Louis führt in seinen Fabriken dieselben Arbeitsmethoden ein, die er aus dem Gefängnis kannte. Nachdem er Émile wiedertrifft, erkennt er nach und nach die Fesseln, die er sich und anderen auflegte. Er schenkt seine Fabriken den Arbeitern und zieht mit Émile - "À nous la liberté" singend - über die Landstraße. Mit dem pantomimischen Spiel seiner Protagonisten, den Verfolgungsjagden und Slapstick-Elementen erinnert der Film auch mit seiner anarchischen Einstellung an Clairs erste Filme, vor allem an Zwischenspiel. Die sozialkritischen Komponenten werden dabei in einer romantisch-anarchistischen Utopie aufgelöst. Trotz der Zensur, der er in einigen europäischen Ländern zum Opfer fiel, hatte der Film großen Erfolg und beeinflusste unter anderem Chaplin, der Es lebe die Freiheit in einigen Teilen zum Vorbild für "Moderne Zeiten" (1936) nahm.
— Peter Ruckriegl
•••••
In one of the most brilliant comedy sequences in cinema history the tension builds as they hold their dignified positions while banknotes from Louis's misplaced hoard drift past on the breeze. The speechmaker drones on, more money descends, the breeze increases, the tension increases. In a contest between greed and honour you know which is going to be the winner: the top-hatted assembly explodes into a disorderly rabble (unlike prisoners and factory workers who are orderly rabble) chasing a blizzard of banknotes.
Does this synopsis make "À nous la liberté" sound like a left wing polemic? It isn't. Despite Clair recalling that he was "close to the Left" in those days, he ended up a member of the Academie Francaise! Political economy was only the raw material of this film, comedy was the product. Indeed, Louis's last act as magnate - nothing less than solution of the class war - is so unbelievable (not fantastic, not impossible, just unbelievable) that the film was banned in the USSR.
"À nous la liberté" is a landmark in the history of film comedy because it's funny, yet it is too satirical for farce, too farcical for satire. And it is a landmark in the history of sound film. Back in 1931 when almost all film directors in every country were cautiously using the new technology as a recording medium, Clair was exploring it as a creative medium. This was in addition to his use of Auric's music. The composition of film music and the sensitivity of its application to the narrative are different arts, not always in harmony(!). "À nous la liberté" set a new standard for them in the formative years of sound film.
No account of this film would be complete without praise for the production design by Lazare Meerson. In a studio-made film most of what meets our eye (though we may not focus on it) is the work of the designer. Meerson's vision of prison and factory, streetscape and salon, commands our attention, provokes our imagination, then yields precedence to the other arts of the narrative.
The exact nature of Clair's humour is problematic. He doesn't treat his characters as puppets, and part of his charm is that he bestows idiosyncrasy on characters who are little more than stereotypes. But he doesn't convey that affection for his characters which we relish in the films of another comic writer-director, Preston Sturges. At the risk of oxymoron, Clair's comedy has great exuberance but not a lot of joy. That doesn't make them less funny, just colder - what John Russell Taylor called "demented clockwork."
— John Flaus, Senses of Cinema October 2000
•••••
Happiness—how might one attain it? With factories? "À Nous la Liberté" is in a sense a definitively radical film. It may be tamer than Vigo’s preadolescent assault, but its arena is adult. It may be less libidinous than Buñuel’s wild ride, but its vectors are less caricatured, more directly representative of actual social forces (although, like "L’Age d’Or", Liberté is largely prefigured on the frustration of romantic desire—Marchand’s puppyish Everyman falls for a secretary after a single glimpse, but his pursuit of her has all the gravity of a Harpo Marx fixation.) Whereas both the supposedly antithetical ideologies of capitalism and socialism agree that work is indeed liberty, Clair argues that freedom is freedom, for the individual to define individually. Despite the memorable late sequence wherein a crowd of top-hatted corporate vultures scramble through a courtyard after wind-blown money, Clair’s target isn’t the nouveau riche, but the very notion of social control. Still, "À Nous la Liberté" isn’t a critical film—it’s a celebration, a living, life-is-a-song proof of the alternatives. Better to own nothing in a field of singing flowers than to sell your life for the right to live.
— Michael Atkinson
(Die Abenteurerin [de])
USA 1941
d: René Clair
Universal Pictures Video (Region 1 us)
USA 1941
d: René Clair
Universal Pictures Video (Region 1 us)
sc: Norman Krasna; René Clair (uncredited)
c: Rudolph Maté (b/w)
e: Frank Gross
pd: Jack Otterson
m: Frank Skinner, Charles Previn (songs "Sweet Is the Blush of May", "Salt o' the Sea" and "Oh, Joyful Day")
p: Joe Pasternak, René Clair (Universal Pictures)
w: Marlene Dietrich, Bruce Cabot, Roland Young, Mischa Auer, Andy Devine, Frank Jenks, Eddie Quillan, Laura Hope Crews, Franklin Pangborn, Theresa Harris, Clarence Muse, Melville Cooper, Anne Revere, Bob Evans, Emily Fitzroy
pr: 24 Apr 1941
aw: Academy Awards 1942 Nominated Oscar Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White
c: Rudolph Maté (b/w)
e: Frank Gross
pd: Jack Otterson
m: Frank Skinner, Charles Previn (songs "Sweet Is the Blush of May", "Salt o' the Sea" and "Oh, Joyful Day")
p: Joe Pasternak, René Clair (Universal Pictures)
w: Marlene Dietrich, Bruce Cabot, Roland Young, Mischa Auer, Andy Devine, Frank Jenks, Eddie Quillan, Laura Hope Crews, Franklin Pangborn, Theresa Harris, Clarence Muse, Melville Cooper, Anne Revere, Bob Evans, Emily Fitzroy
pr: 24 Apr 1941
aw: Academy Awards 1942 Nominated Oscar Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White
rt: 79:14 min
dvd-rl: 04 Apr 2006
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
st: English (captions), Spanish, French
supp: Marlene Dietrich: The Glamour Collection
DISC 1, SIDE A
• Morocco
• Blonde Venus
• Theatrical Trailer "Morocco" (2:24 min)
DISC 1, SIDE B
• The Devil Is a Woman
• The Flame of New Orleans
DISC 2
• Golden Earrings
• Theatrical Trailer (2:19 min)
dvd-rl: 04 Apr 2006
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
st: English (captions), Spanish, French
supp: Marlene Dietrich: The Glamour Collection
DISC 1, SIDE A
• Morocco
• Blonde Venus
• Theatrical Trailer "Morocco" (2:24 min)
DISC 1, SIDE B
• The Devil Is a Woman
• The Flame of New Orleans
DISC 2
• Golden Earrings
• Theatrical Trailer (2:19 min)
After the end of her partnership with Josef von Sternberg, Dietrich didn't regain her professional stride until 1939, when she was cast as a roistering bar hostess in the spoof Western, "Destry Rides Again". Here, two films later, she's playing a variation on the role: an émigré adventuress with a dubious past in St Petersburg, trying to pose as a countess in New Orleans, torn between a 'sensible' marriage and her wild passion for the butch young captain of a Mississippi steamer. This was the first of the four films that Clair directed in Hollywood during his wartime exile from France, and he was clearly content to swim with the tide: he simply films the formulary but entertaining script, with a minimum of directorial touches. It is, of course, Dietrich who carries it.
— TR, Time Out Film Guide
— TR, Time Out Film Guide
(Meine Frau, die Hexe [de])
USA 1942
d: René Clair
Kinowelt Home Entertainment/DVD (Region 0 de)
USA 1942
d: René Clair
Kinowelt Home Entertainment/DVD (Region 0 de)
sc: Robert Pirosh, Marc Connelly; René Clair, André Rigaud (dialogue, uncredited), Dalton Trumbo (contributing, uncredited) (from the story "The Passionate Witch" by Thorne Smith, Norman Matson)
c: Ted Tetzlaff (b/w)
e: Eda Warren
pd: Hans Dreier, Ernst Fegté
m: Roy Webb
p: René Clair (Rene Clair Productions as Cinema Guild Productions for United Artists)
w: Fredric March, Veronica Lake, Robert Benchley, Susan Hayward, Cecil Kellaway, Elizabeth Patterson, Robert Warwick
pr: 30 Okt 1942
aw: Academy Awards 1943 Nominated Oscar Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
c: Ted Tetzlaff (b/w)
e: Eda Warren
pd: Hans Dreier, Ernst Fegté
m: Roy Webb
p: René Clair (Rene Clair Productions as Cinema Guild Productions for United Artists)
w: Fredric March, Veronica Lake, Robert Benchley, Susan Hayward, Cecil Kellaway, Elizabeth Patterson, Robert Warwick
pr: 30 Okt 1942
aw: Academy Awards 1943 Nominated Oscar Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
rt: 73:19 (+4%PAL= 77) min
dvd-rl: 22 Sep 2006
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono • German Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
st: German
supp: --
dvd-rl: 22 Sep 2006
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono • German Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
st: German
supp: --
Heresy here: Clair's '30s musical comedies have always been acclaimed as enormously original, innovative classics, far superior to his American films. But where those French films now seem dated and Chaplinesque in their twee sentimentality and naïve desire to make a serious point, the American films remain delightful: unpretentious, pacy and genuinely witty. I Married a Witch sees Clair at his peak, with an ambitious, puritanical politician (March) being plagued by the mischievous Lake, a witch reincarnated and bent on revenge after being burned at the stake by his ancestors. Lake is delightfully effective as the malicious woman, whose ideas of punishment are often beautifully absurd, and March provides an excellent foil.
— GA, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Lake, who had only been in films for a year, is wonderfully effective. Released from the sustained tension of film noir material, she demonstrates a quirky sense of comedy. Her line readings tingle with malice and hoydenish longing. WITCH also presents a lighter, warmer, more likable March than ever before--his chemistry with Lake is very engaging.
This is one of the rare instances where the "other woman" measures up to the lead in beauty and presence. Despite having her own beautiful hair chignoned to play up Lake's, Hayward's career took a major step here, snagging her a series of hard-bitten second leads that prepared her for the Davis-Crawford-Stanwyck roles that would establish her later as a great star. And WITCH finds Kellaway in peak form--it's his most three-dimensional role. Look out, too, for humorist Robert Benchley as March's confused political advisor.
This film, with its wonderful special effects, was in the hilarious tradition of TOPPER and THE GHOST GOES WEST. Clair's direction is swift and sure, producing a livelier, more cohesive effort than his first Hollywood production, THE FLAME OF NEW ORLEANS, which fizzled at the box office. This Thorne Smith tale, taken from an incomplete novel, worked so well onscreen that it inspired the popular sitcom, "Bewitched."
— TV MovieGuide
— GA, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Lake, who had only been in films for a year, is wonderfully effective. Released from the sustained tension of film noir material, she demonstrates a quirky sense of comedy. Her line readings tingle with malice and hoydenish longing. WITCH also presents a lighter, warmer, more likable March than ever before--his chemistry with Lake is very engaging.
This is one of the rare instances where the "other woman" measures up to the lead in beauty and presence. Despite having her own beautiful hair chignoned to play up Lake's, Hayward's career took a major step here, snagging her a series of hard-bitten second leads that prepared her for the Davis-Crawford-Stanwyck roles that would establish her later as a great star. And WITCH finds Kellaway in peak form--it's his most three-dimensional role. Look out, too, for humorist Robert Benchley as March's confused political advisor.
This film, with its wonderful special effects, was in the hilarious tradition of TOPPER and THE GHOST GOES WEST. Clair's direction is swift and sure, producing a livelier, more cohesive effort than his first Hollywood production, THE FLAME OF NEW ORLEANS, which fizzled at the box office. This Thorne Smith tale, taken from an incomplete novel, worked so well onscreen that it inspired the popular sitcom, "Bewitched."
— TV MovieGuide
d = director; sc = screenplay; c = cinematographer; e = editor; pd = production design / art director;
m = music score ; p = producer; w = cast; pr = premiere; aw = awards;
rt = runtime; dvd-rl = dvd release; ar = aspect ratio; sd = soundtracks; st = subtitles; supp = supplements
m = music score ; p = producer; w = cast; pr = premiere; aw = awards;
rt = runtime; dvd-rl = dvd release; ar = aspect ratio; sd = soundtracks; st = subtitles; supp = supplements