[With "A Nous la Liberté"] René Clair establishes himself as the most accomplished and intelligent exponent of the art of the cinema. This is not to say that he is unsurpassed in all aspects of film-making. The Russians provide richer photography; the Lubitsch "touch" has a human warmth that Clair lacks—and probably scorns. The interesting fact about M. Clair is that he has mastered his technique as a whole so thorougly that he is now able to employ it freely in creating a style of his own. In his hands the film, about which so little in the way of definition or scope has been understood, much less formulated, emerges almost for the first time as a separate and fully developed form of artistic expression.

M. Clair made it clear in his first picture, "Sous les Toits de Paris," that the film as a form of art...