Freiheit

George Lucas was going through making short films with deep meanings!! This one is just classic!! It's about German WW2 and a boy trying to escape Germany but is Shot down, in a gory manner!!

I have not seen the complete movie, just the final minute available at USC website. It pretty much looks like an early version of "Electronic Labyrinth" (1967), and perhaps an early thought on the final moments of "THX 1138" (1971). It has never been clear to me what happens to THX after he goes to the surface. Like in this little short movie, you sympathize all the time with the quest for freedom of the main character, even if you don't know exactly what he is running from. In "Labyrinth" and "THX", you are not sure if he succeeds. In "Freiheit", it is clear what happens. May be the most interesting Lucas student film, after "Electronic Labyrinth".

"So of course freedom is worth dying for, because without freedom, we're dead."

Freiheit is the first short film from George Lucas where I feel like his main focus was writing. Especially the themes and somewhat character. Dialogues were pulled from recordings. I wasn't a fan of the score and sound design, but it was interesting for sure and I understand that in 1966 it was not easy to mix sound. The editing is good, except for one scene, where it's great. The cinematography introduces slow motion, which I haven't seen George Lucas do in his short films before, which also goes for the use of miniatures and matte paintings (in the opening titles). On the other hand I don't exactly know what the correct order is, since there aren't exact release dates for these shorts.

Another early George Lucas short - he's so serious about it he doesn't even go by his Christian name, goodness - and here it's basically just Randall Kleiser running, stopping, and then running some more before getting shot. Maybe it's this was Lucas's own warped take on the Richard Lester short (who was one of the director's early idols by the way) The Running Jumping Standing (etc) film. This could also be called the Running, Stopping, Panting, Running, Dying film. While it's title refers to the word 'Freedom' in German, it makes for an unsettling experience by how it's shot, by how little is explained (this was Lucas when he was in pure abstract-experimentation mode, discovering his voice through pure visual grammar, and any emotion came out of the force of the picture and editing), and that the voices in the last minute sound like they're taken from stock audio clips, not recorded by Lucas himself. It's certainly not terribly sophisticated as much as it thinks - it's a guy clearly being first given sight to the more heady concept of the 60's and post-JFK/Civil Rights era of thought - but the force of the filmmaking works in its favor, and Kleiser is an apt guy to personify it with his glasses and gangly physical demeanor.

Any Lucas fan worth his salt will want to check out this embryonic piece detailing the failed attempt of a boy to escape from unknown pursuers; presumably representatives of a repressive "empire". It is noteworthy that even at this stage of his career, Lucas was fascinated by war. The bitter disillusionment expressed here provides a sharp contrast to the cheerful optimism and good-triumphs-over-evil ending of the Star Wars trilogy. The symbolic desire for freedom here could equally apply to freedom of the imagination, an autonomy Lucas has always sought from studios in producing his work.