A MAN ESCAPED Movie Review

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

Describing director Robert Bresson's art by any method other than showing it is a tantalizing but futile task. “I have been influenced by no one,” Bresson said in a 1966 interview, “I am a painter as well as a director, which perhaps explains why I feel the meaning must reside in the image alone.” Based on the true story of a Frenchman imprisoned by the Gestapo for his affiliation with the Resistance, this film about the experience of imprisonment builds to a transforming, perhaps transcendental, moment for both the prisoner and the viewer. Since the title lets us know the outcome of the story, the almost unbearable suspense the film generates has to do with the moment-by-moment details of survival and awareness that lead ultimately to the hero's experiencing what can only be described as a miracle. Using natural sounds, objects, and shadows, as well as a non-professional actor at the film's center, Bresson has fashioned a work of supernatural mystery and spiritual purity. For those of us who tend to regard the cinema with a reverence that borders on the religious, the existence of this film—and indeed all of the work of Robert Bresson—stands as one small bit of justification for the reverence that we feel.

NEXT STOP … Le Trou, Pickpocket, Escape from Alcatraz

1957 102m/B Francois Leterrier, Charles Le Clainche, Roland Monot, Maurice Beerblock, Jacques Ertand; D: Robert Bresson; W: Robert Bresson; C: L.H. Burel. Cannes Film Festival ‘57: Best Director (Bresson). VHS NYF