An escaped convict makes himself over as a phonograph mogul whose assembly-line factory replicates his erstwhile prison experiences. Director Rene Clair’s genial musical satire about industrial progress and individual freedom was the only one of his great films he felt unsatisfied with, but his sense of irony and visual comedy attains a formal perfection he would never achieve again. Lazare Meerson’s sets and Georges Auric’s score are part of the film’s magic.