'Freedom For Us'

One of my favorite discoveries doing this project is 1930s French films. Like Freedom For Us and The Million, these were jaunty, yet meaningful, well-done films that aptly straddle the ridiculous with an over-arching commentary on modern society.

Like Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, Freedom For Us takes on the vast and growing world of high industry enveloping Europe and the United States, especially after World War I.

There was a feeling that humans -- especially the lower class -- were becoming automatons -- mindless lemmings marching to and fro from the assembly line acting robotically when the factory whistle blew like Pavlov's dogs. These are the same themes addressed by Jacques Tati two decades later.

Chaplin's Modern Times has a bit of connection with Freedom For Us. The former was released five years latre and it details Chaplin's character working in a large factory. One scene involves Chaplin frantically trying to keep up with the assembly line by himself, a scene not unlike one in Freedom For Us.

Freedom For Us' production company was German and they sued. Remember, this is 1936 or 1937. The Nazis were in power and it was thought that this was just a means of "discrediting" Chaplin, whatever end that would produce. An out-of-court settlement was reached a decade later, after World War II.