Cebalord Very best movie i ever watch

Onlinewsma Absolutely Brilliant!

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Robert J. Maxwell Raymond Cordi and Henri Marchand are two prisoners in an environment without soul. The inmates all sit at a long table and make tiny toy horses on an assembly line. When chow time rolls around they clunk along in ragged lockstep in their wooden sabots to the mess hall where they sit at long tables and serve themselves from a treadmill bearing bowls of food and pitchers of water.Cordi escapes with the help of Marchand who is captured. Cordi is a promoter and begins a business selling old phonograph records on the street. Soon he's a big shot, a millionaire in charge of a huge plant, and owner of The Record Palace.Later, Marchand escapes too, in the kind of scene that Charlie Chaplin might easily have used in "Modern Times", which appeared five years later. Marchard is in his cell and decides to hang himself. He fastens a short noose around his neck and ties the other end to the bars across his cell window. Then he jumps from the bed. His weight pulls the bars from the window and they fall with a clank on his head.Overjoyed, Marchand climbs to the open window and looks out. On the curb below him sits an armless and crippled beggar with a coat draped over him, cadging change from passers by. Marchand leaps from the window and lands atop the beggar, who jumps to his feet and shrugs off the coat, revealing two brawny arms. A mélée ensues and Marchand is able to dash away.I don't know if Chaplin was inspired by "À Nous la Liberté," but it's a little too coincidental that in both films the workers should sit at an assembly line, one should miss a beat, causing the next to miss a beat, and wind up with half a dozen workers piling all over one another trying to catch up to the unfinished items on the assembly line. I guess if it was good enough for René Clair it's good enough for Chaplin, and for Lucy and Ethel too, for that matter.The plot gets a bit complicated. Marchand seeks out Cordi, who is of two minds about the matter, but helps him out anyway. Others discover Cordi's real identity and expose him. But just as the police are about to take him in hand, Cordi decides to get out from under and turn the factory over to the workers.If it was funny and sometimes touching before, the climax is hilarious. An ancient executive of the company is trying to read a famous poem in front of all the other executives and the workers. Gradually, a wind begins to blow, and then blows even stronger. From a hidden stash, a thousand franc note blows passed the executives in their tuxedos and high hats. A second note. The executives are getting antsy as the notes blow past their feet. They fidget and squirm, trying to remain dignified as befits their status, until one of them breaks ranks and makes a bee-line for a thousand-franc note. Then they all run madly after the money and so does everyone else. The listeners brawl, the wind blows away the stand, the band disappears, and the wizened old speaker finally finishes his poem, only to look up and find the entire courtyard empty.Cordi is the model of a phony rich guy who has married into society and now has a wife who loathes him and is having an affair with another mustachioed man whose hair seems made entirely of grease. Marchand couldn't be better as the simple-minded and impulsive child-like figure. And the director, René Clair, has done well by them. When the two escapees are together and faced by some common threat, they exchange glances and we can hear the rough cadence of those wooden clogs on the prison floor.

Ralph DeLuca Rene Clair is an absolute genius, and this film more than proves it. Chaplin even took from this film for Modern Times and made an out of court cash settlement to Clair for it. Its shows the rise and fall of a man who escapes prison and opens up a factory manufacturing phonograph players. Its funny to watch his rise in fortune and fame and to see the character evolve. I was very happy to get this film on DVD. This is the first Rene Clair film I recommend watching and then Le Million, The Italian Straw hat and I married a witch. Being a big comedy fan I was instantly drawn in by his quick wit and gags. I think most Americans overlook how great foreign comedy can be and this film is a great to start the journey.Anyone who thinks the French are not funny need to watch this film.

Hitchcoc Usually held up as a significant film due to its place between silence and talk, and as an early satire on the burden of the working class, this is certainly interesting. There is symbolism from beginning to end with workers lined up at the gates of factories contrasted with prisoners making little toy horses. One man escapes and becomes a great entrepreneur while his friend is left behind, yearning for freedom. The result is an odd couple. The men eventually work together, but the second man becomes a real liability. I guess we are supposed to see him as a sympathetic care, trying to get the young woman he pines for, but he comes off as a real pain in the butt, messing up just about everything he touches. I am going to say I appreciate the early cinematography and the way the story is told, but I can't say it was terribly engaging. The conclusion with its fishing utopia is just too silly for my tastes.

swdavies49 Two of the previous reviews have the names of the main characters reversed, another is reviewing the wrong movie, and lots of them can't spell. But anyway, the film is both elegant and funny, the characters make wonderful facial expressions, and even though the version I watched was a little scanty with the subtitles, it wasn't hard to understand what was happening. I think the characters are very appealing. They are not sentimentalized as some of Chaplin's characters are, but they are still very sympathetic. What surprised me the most was how modern the sets looked - very spare and elegant. I don't know if actual places in the 1930's ever looked like the President's home, and I suspect very few places anywhere ever did, alas.