up to about ten minutes. Themes The film comments on society by depicting industrial working conditions as not much different from being in prison. DVD Verdict's Barrie Maxwell adds that the film depicts "a France oblivious to all going on around it, as portrayed by the sequence in which an aging French politician drones on to his audience about justice and liberty and patriotism, while the audience has long since lost interest, preferring instead to concentrate on chasing money that has accidentally fallen out of a bag and is now blowing in the wind." Critic Michael Atkinson views the film as "expressly dismissive of both Stalinism and industrial dehumanization (Liberté's world is a seamless commingling of both)" and argues that "Clair's film holds only the anarchistic principle of liberty sacred." Release and reception Initial reviews À nous la liberté was both critically and commercially successful. Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times argued that its humor "is provocative of thought", and praised "the cleverly designed settings for the scenes in both the prison and the factory. This angle of the production is extraordinarily thorough, every detail having received most careful attention." Chaplin controversy The film became embroiled in controversy following the release of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936), which bore some similarities to this film, such as the conveyor belt gags. In the end, instead of going to court, the two parties reached a settlement, but the whole episode lasted around a decade. Chaplin maintained that he had never seen À nous la liberté, as did everyone else at his studio. René Clair himself was never a part of the case, and was actually quite embarrassed by it, since he had great admiration for Chaplin, to whom he stated all filmmakers were in debt. He said on multiple occasions that he would be honored if one of his films had inspired Chaplin. There has been speculation that, as Tobis Film, À nous la liberté'''s production company, was German, this case was part of a conspiracy by Nazi Germany to discredit Chaplin. It is notable that the out-of-court settlement was reached only after the end of World War II. 1950 version In 1950, Clair re-released the film, deleting two scenes: The scene in which the flowers sing to Émile after he wakes up in a field. The sequence depicting Émile's date with Jeanne. (In some countries, this sequence had already been