Turning, if we have not already turned, from the autumn offerings of the Hollywood general staff, we may cool our prematurely furrowed brown and indulge in one or two genuinely escapist, laughs at the presentation of "A Noun, La Liberte." Not even Lubitsch, whose sophistication is in the grand manner, has made anything half so gay. And for the intellectuals present there are implications, yes indeed.

Aside from the epistemological photography of which Clair is a master, the swaggering, lilting, scurrying action of the plot perambulates the great problem of Society in the Machine Age. The prison and the factory, could any one mistake that parallel? Yet this is a parody that parodies itself. Nothing is taken seriously but the friendship of Louis and Emile, whose adventures in gently inept romance and business melodrama, respectively, run hilariously together: and since this is no very serious matter, either, we are never required to depart from the tone established with such precision in the early scenes. M. Clair's control of his craft is sure enough to permit him an almost improvisatory lightness in places without the slightest detriment to the narrative, and the consistent use of tinsel scenery, paper flowers, and music box accompaniment is quite in keeping with the fantasy of the whole.