Le ballet méanique: This famous abstract film combines painted or drawn geometrical forms with photographic images, including the well-known sequence of a woman endlessly mounting a staircase; the often outrageous, Freudian sexual symbolism looks forward to later Surrealist films. Directed by Fernand Legé. Photographed by Dudley Murphy. (1924, 14 mins, Silent, 35mm, Print from PFA Collection) A nous la liberté René Clair was one of the first directors to use sound selectively: in his films, spoken dialogue,incidental noises and especially music were all harnessed to create humor or suspense, and sound was often omitted entirely rather than used unnecessarily. ("There is no need to hear all of the doors bang and every character breathe, nor to hear conversation every time anyone's lips move," Clair stated.) A nous la liberté marks the culmination of Clair's experiments in sound in two previous films, Sous les toits de Paris (Under the Roofs of Paris) and Le million. Like Chaplin's Modern Times, which it influened (just as Clair's characters were influenced by Chaplin's before them), A nous la libert?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 (Raymond Cody), now the owner of a large phonograph company, and Emile (Henri Marchand), a confirmed, freedom-loving vagabond. Clair combines fantasy with irony, whimsy with wistful pessimism, musical comedy with fine-tunedslapstick to create a satire of the highest order.