A MAN ESCAPED Movie Review

Un Condamne a Mort s'Est Echappe, Ou le Vent Souffle ou Il Vent
A Man Escaped, or the Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth A Condemned Man Has Escaped

1957 Robert Bresson

Robert Bresson's prisoner of war film is a cold, unsentimental examination of isolation. Forget the conventional Hollywood heroics of the genre. Bresson avoids the very scenes of action and torture that provide the emotional underpinning viewers expect to see. His rigorously fact-based black-and-white account of an escape from a German prison in Lyon, France, 1943, is pared down to the essentials of character, place, and situation.

It opens with Lt. Fontaine (Francois Leterrier) in the back seat of a moving car. The two handcuffed men with him have given up all hope, but Fontaine's fingers inch toward the door handle as he waits for the right moment. What follows sets the tone for the rest of the film. Though the exact charges against Fontaine are not detailed, it's clear that he is in serious trouble. Executions are part of the routine at the prison. Fontaine does not know what his future is and so he resolves to escape. It's not a dramatic declaration of his unquenchable thirst for freedom or any of the other cliched cinematic bushwa. It's simply something he must do and he sets about it quietly. The first problem: How to get out of his solitary cell?

Bresson lets the story unfold at a deliberate pace, mirroring the slow, repetitive rhythms of prison life. He keeps his camera focused tightly on Fontaine, and seldom moves beyond his immediate point of view as he makes and rejects plans, carefully hordes materials to construct tools, learns how to make his ropes, and confronts his own fears. First-person voice-over narration describes his intentions and plans as they're being formed, but most of the emotions come through Leterrier's understated, naturalistic performance, astonishingly effective for a non-professional actor. (He was a philosophy student and officer in the army.) In the same way, Bresson uses Mozart sparingly in the score, not to emphasize the big decisive moments, but to illustrate Fontaine's moods. It is an unusual technique, one that doubtlessly will put off many viewers who have been weaned on contemporary high-octane war movies.

Bresson spent a year in a German prison himself. Perhaps because of that, he knows he has nothing to prove and so can deal with the subject on a more intellectual level. Andre Devigny, whose escape is the basis for the story, served as technical advisor, and much of the film was made in the cell in Fort Montluc, where he was imprisoned. Like the other important aspects of the film, that authenticity is handled in a matter-of-fact manner.

Bresson began his career as a painter, and painterly comparisons are often applied to his work. But Bresson is also a Catholic, and the religious side of his films is as important as it is to his contemporary, Ingmar Bergman. It's strong in A Man Escaped, and so this is one of the most intelligent and contemplative films to come out of World War II.

Cast: Francois Leterrier (Lt. Fontaine), Charles Le Clainche (Francois Jost), Roland Monod (Le Pasteur), Maurice Beerblock (Blanchet), Jacques Ertaud (Orsini), Jean-Paul Delhumeau (Hebrard), Roger Treherne (Terry), Jean-Philippe Delamarre (Prisoner No. 110), Cesar Gattegno (Le Prisonnier X), Jacques Oerlemans (Chief Warder), Klaus Detlef Grevenhorst (German intelligence officer), Leonard Schmidt (Le Con-voyeur); Written by: Robert Bresson; Cinematography by: L.H. Burel; Technical Advisor: Andre Devigny. Producer: Alain Poire, Jean Thuillier. Awards: Cannes Film Festival '57: Best Director (Bresson). Running Time: 102 minutes. Format: VHS.