Synopsis:
Seven guests, a newly hired personal secretary and two staff are gathered for a weekend on an isolated island by the hosts the Owens who are delayed. At dinner a record is played and the host’s message alleges that all the people present are guilty of murder and suddenly the first of them is dead, then the next – It seems that one of them is the murderer but the leading person is always the person who is murdered next and at last only two people are left.Read More »
Having lost a battle against the Prince of Beaulieu, Marechal d’Allenberg returns to his castle with his few remaining followers. As famine takes its toll, one of d’Allenberg’s men, Joli Coeur, sets off to look for food. The latter not only finds some pork, but he also saves the honour of a beautiful girl who was being attacked by some lustful brutes. On his return to the castle, Joli Coeur is surprised to see both the man who gave him the pork and the girl he rescued. The girl turns out to be d’Allenberg’s daughter, Hélène. Knowing that Joli Coeur would do everything for her, Hélène asks him to leave for a secret and dangerous mission. He must go back behind the enemy lines to look for Frédéric, the Prince of Beaulieu’s son, and ask him to stop the war…Read More »
“Criterion” wrote:
In René Clair’s irrepressibly romantic portrait of the crowded tenements of Paris, a street singer and a gangster vie for the love of a beautiful young woman. This witty exploration of love and human foibles, told primarily through song, captures the flamboyant atmosphere of the city with sophisticated visuals and groundbreaking use of the new technology of movie sound. An international sensation upon its release, Under the Roofs of Paris is an exhilarating celebration of filmmaking and one of France’s most beloved cinematic exports.Read More »
Quote:
René Clair’s exuberant anti-capitalist satire À nous la liberté was one of the early triumphs of sound cinema and is still considered one of the all-time greats of French cinema. The film is a light-hearted comic tour de force, erupting into unbridled farce in a few places, and yet it also offers an intelligent reflection on one of the major social preoccupations of the time: the gradual dehumanisation of mankind through technological progress. In characteristically humorous vein, Clair gives us a speculative glimpse of the future in which human beings are reduced to quasi-machines to meet the remorseless capitalist imperative for ever greater efficiency and increased output. The demoralising repetitiveness of life on the factory production line mirrors the endless monotony of the prison scenes at the start of the film, and both contain echoes of the Fascistic nightmare that would overrun most of Europe in the 1930s. In an era of immense social and technological change, Clair poses a timely question: what is man’s destiny, to be a free individualist or a robotic slave to corporate greed?Read More »