À nous la liberté, sometimes written as À nous la liberté!, (English: Freedom Forever or Freedom for Us) is a 1931 French musical film directed by René Clair. With a score by Georges Auric, it has more music than any of Clair's other early works. Praised for its use of sound and Academy Award-nominated scenic design, the film has been called Clair's "crowning achievement". Plot summary Inmates at a French prison make toy wooden horses at a long table. Émile, one of the prisoners, distracts a guard so his friend, Louis, can steal a hook-shaped tool. That night, the pair escape from their cell. Louis scales the inner wall of the facility using a rope tied to the hook, but Émile is spotted when he tries to follow. Émile throws the rope to Louis and tells him to run for it. Several guards chase Émile, while Louis climbs the outer wall. Panicked, Louis runs into a road and is hit by a bicyclist. He rides off on the man's bicycle and ends up winning a race. Later, he covers up his theft of a small shop by acting as though he was attacked by a thief while the proprietor was out of the room. Starting as a poor record merchant, Louis is able to work his way up until he is the well-attired and well-mannered head of a business that makes phonographs. The factory is run with great efficiency and the workers, overseen by a strict foreman, toil on an assembly line in an environment reminiscent of the prison from which Louis escaped. In a field behind the factory, Émile (apparently having been released from prison) wakes from a nap in the grass. The Sun is shining and some flowers sing him a song, but then two policemen come by and arrest him for vagrancy. From his jail cell, he hears music and sees, in an apartment across the street, a woman who appears to be singing while she hangs flowers around a window. Not wanting to be incarcerated any more, Émile tries to hang himself from the prison window, but the bars comes loose, so he escapes instead. Finding himself below the flower-covered window, Émile pauses to listen to the song, which winds down and stops, revealing to him that it was being played on a phonograph. He turns and sees the woman, Jeanne, standing next to him on