User Reviews

A MAN ESCAPED is a great war drama about despair and unbearable circumstances from which a man tries to escape. The main protagonist is an activist of the resistance movement. He was arrested after one action. After the initial shock, the young man begins to plan an escape from prison, and he moves in a race against time because his enemies threaten him with liquidation.

The story is honest and realistic in many segments. The plot is, if we ignore the mystical introduction, very simple. Scenery is confined to a very small space, which directly contributes to an increased sense of fear, despair and anxiety of the main character. Mr. Bresson made the film without specific decorations, classic turnaround and growing tensions. Simply, the focus is on the prisoner who tried to escape. The plot is realistic and spontaneous. One young man must choose between life and certain death. He was on his own in the inner monologue on the difficult road to knowledge.

François Leterrier as Lieutenant Fontaine is calm and dedicated to the inner struggle. His performance is impressive. It's hard to believe that he is not a professional actor. His appearance is unreal and convincing. This is evident in his haggard and engrossed face, bloody shirt and torn stockings.

This film is a reflection of a cruel experience. One man in a desperate, depressed and uncertain fight for his life, or perhaps some form of redemption.

This movie, perhaps above all others, exemplifies just how important sound is in cinema. In fact, sounds (excluding dialogue) help carry the plot as much as the visuals and dialogue.

The crunching of the gravel under their feet really creates a sense of realism to the story. If you or I were escaping from prison, all the sounds Fontaine must pay attention to we must as well.

I doubt you'll find this film at your local video store, but I encourage everyone to check it out. It's like the Shawshank of the 1950s.

What makes a movie great? Sometimes we find it in an actor's performance, sometimes it lies in the plot, maybe is the suspense, or amazing action scenes. "A Man Escaped", a movie by acclaimed director Robert Bresson delivers none of those elements we usually associate with great films. However, the expertise and craftsmanship of Bresson makes for an unparalleled experience, full of non-stop suspense that keeps you at the edge of your seat, captivated by every action and every move. In fact, this is one of the first times in recent memory when I don't end up checking my watch, or looking around, or even exchanging a couple of words with my company. "A Man Escaped" simply doesn't allow you to catch your breath. Bresson is known for his very distinct style, in which his interest goes beyond performances or strong plots, but rather relies on the character of his scenes, in the way he builds each and every take to make you build the environment for yourself. Bresson is the mastermind behind the term "suggestive" cinema. He shows you just enough for you to build the scene on your own and it is such a subtle directing skill, that you don't realize unless you carefully study the art of his direction. Bresson submerges us in a prisoner's routine, inside a process of patience and conviction that eventually pays off. Bresson goes as far as to show us the result of the movie in its very title, fully confident that even when you know what will happen at the end, there is no way you won't feel the increasing tension, and electrifying suspense that starts from the very first scenes. At the end, it is a movie about patience, about the intellect of a prisoner whose will and desire to escape a prison portrays the strengths of the human spirit. However, the movie does not have uplifting phrases that often fall into clichés. This, ladies and gentleman, is what cinema can do for us. Less is more.

Pages and pages of film criticism could be, and most likely have been, written about this film, so I will just include my simple wholehearted recommendation, in the hopes that whoever is reading this will seek out "A Man Escaped" immediately. I can think of few films with a simpler premise and plot line - it really is only about an anonymous man in prison attempting to escape. That's it. Yet, director Robert Bresson, more than any other director I can think of (with the exception of Yasujiro Ozu), can imbue the drab everyday details of life with life-and-death importance. This director could make a movie about a guy tying his shoes into a riveting cinematic experience. His style of film-making is completely unobtrusive and restrained, because he has figured out a simple truth that about 95% of all film directors never realize: the less a director tries to "push" his ideas through a film, ironically, the greater the range of ideas he is able to elicit in his audience. You bring to this movie whatever life experience and ideas you carry with you; an older child as well as an aging philosophy professor can enjoy this film equally, and for very different reasons. In addition, I believe this is also the most realistic film that I have ever seen. It takes the skill of a master to make reality into great cinema, and this film is one of Bresson's greatest. It could even be his greatest, because though his other films "Au Hasard Balthazar" and "Pickpocket" are great masterpieces, they can never have the same kind of accessibility to virtually any living person in the world as this has.

Was there ever a sparer, more concentrated film? The painstaking focus on the ritual-like preparation for the escape is almost wrenching in its calm severity; yet always graceful, always fluid. The details of the final escape make for one of the most memorable sequences in cinema - interspersed with episodes of doubt in which he falters for hours or more before taking the next step, just as he delays the escape itself for many days even though he knows his execution is imminent. It's almost like a sombre dance with death, or at least a morally exacting examination of one's limits and a fear of the transcendent (which in this case is represented merely by freedom itself). There are no moments of light relief or variation here, just an attention to process and causality - the concentration on the plan almost becomes a means of redemption, until carrying out the plan becomes almost superfluous if not destructive. Of all Bresson's films, this is the one that best engages on a thematic level while simultaneously working as narrative - his distilled gravity constitutes a fantastically effective suspense mechanism; a model of tight storytelling.

Bresson's command of the cinematic language...and more importantly, his restraint... make this a very powerful story of one man's determination to find meaning in his actions, focused goal, and adherence to his beliefs.

Presumably tipping off the viewer with the title (A Man Escaped) we already suspect how it will end, and therefore the tension isn't in the final twists of the story, but rather, his journey to that place.

Narrative stripped down of all melodramatic trappings, the film manages to reveal a larger truth about man's struggle against unknowable odds, his struggle with himself, and his resolve to move forward. A couple of the side-characters are from the church, or pastors, which give the ongoing conversations in the common areas an added resonance to "grace" and a possibility of transcendental deliverance. Even though the lead character doesn't seem to truck much with religious faith.

He has his own - in his resolve to escape.

It's appropriate that we barely know why the lead character is in prison, only that he is already on the way there when the film starts. (And even then, tries a failed attempt to run from the car that is transporting him. So much for back-story. The character is revealed through his subsequent actions.)

A simple beautiful film focused on humanity at its most desperate, spare, and focused.

This is one superior made movie. I don't know what it as about prison movies but they often work out as such great ones. This one manages to be original as well, due to its approach and just overall execution of it all.

It's perhaps that we really start to feel and identify for and with the main character, in a prison movie. We get to see the restrained and strict world he lives in through his eyes and we can hear what he is hearing and almost feel what he is feeling because we as the viewer are so close up to him. In this movie this is even more the case than ever. The story is being told completely from his perspective and also features his narration over the sequences. It makes the movie really an effective one. It of course also helps the movie and story that we can root for the main character, since he is a member of the French resistance that got caught and held in prison by the Nazi's, during WW II. We only see what he sees and only hear what he hears. And this movie uses takes great advantage of this approach. I especially liked the incredible use of sound throughout the movie.

But the movie does not only use a great approach, it also manages to build up its story extremely well. I just love how he plan his escape in tiny steps throughout the movie. He picks up up an item here, makes a tool there, sends and gets some information here, studies the guards movements there and takes just tiny steps every time to get closer to his breakout from jail. It's incredible how well and intriguing this works out all for the movie. Fore the movie and its story itself are actually being quite simplistic. This is not an high budget movie and uses limited resources to tell its story with.

It's also one of those movies that uses non-professional actors, to add to the movie its realism. This is a thing that was popular for a while with Italian and French film-makers. It did not always worked out too well for just every movie but in this case you can't really complain about it. The characters simply work out, so the acting was convincing and realistic.

This is such a great minimalistic movie. It does incredibly well with its simplistic story and concept and picks a wonderful, effective approach to it all.

9/10

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The stoically minimized material, a man's precisely prepared, calculated, and then executed escape from a Nazi-prison, effectively builds up an astonishingly intense tension. (For that matter, only similar film I can recall is Cluzot's Wages of Fear, made a couple of years earlier.) In this very quiet A Man Escaped, only music is sporadically inserted Mozart, but it might have worked better without any music.

Bresson audaciously began realism and stood alone in pre-New-Wave France, but left tremendous influences on generations of filmmakers to come.

Though the title seems to ruin the ending, the movie isn't boring for a moment. Suspense to the end. Marvelous filmmaking. The movie follows slowly and quietly the day of the prisoner who's to be executed and plans an escape. I don't know what else to say. You have to watch this. 32 of the 46 voters gave it a 10! Genius. They don't make movies like this often. Must See for movie lovers and all.

Director Robert Bresson's 'A Man Escaped' is the real-life story of André Devigny, a member of the French Resistance sent to Montluc prison by the Nazis, and is true to history. The style is stark and minimalistic, and while that doesn't necessarily make it dated, I suspect it had much larger impact in 1956, just a decade after the war, than it does today (artistically and emotionally). There are moments of real tension, starting with when the protagonist gets another prisoner assigned to his cell and wonders how to proceed with his escape plans, one option being to kill him. There are unfortunately also moments of tedium. Bresson is honest to the experience of imprisonment, but that doesn't make for riveting viewing. The Nazi guards seem remarkably absent - we see them at times administering punishment briefly, or bringing food, but they are in the background, and if the film wasn't based on a true story, you might think it unrealistically so. That may be part of the point, that there is an interior battle here, to never surrender hoping, to not give in, and to be brave, but when it's combined with under-stated emotion from the actors, I think it takes away from the realism that Bresson was striving for. I wish the ending could have been expanded upon as well. A solid film, but not one I'd want to watch again, or recommend without reservations.

An excellent war movie portraying the final days & months of a convicted French officer trying to escape from a German Prison and a pending execution during WWII.

For the majority of the film we are like a fly-on-the-wall observing Lieutenant Fontaine (François Leterrier) come to terms with the fact that he is going to be shot very soon and that no one other than himself is going to come to his rescue.

In addition we share the confined cell with our pessimistic officer. Understatement swamps every scene - but this is very much a good thing. There are no heroics, loud explosions of gunfire, flag waving jingoism or tightened-square jaws here...this is very much reality.

Neither is director Bresson concerned about hurrying the film along. Instead every scene is measured to precision; every camera angle is clearly pre-defined; and every emotion & inner doubt from Leterrier is emphasised very simply.

The film is so claustrophobic that you feel you want to gasp for air such is the tightness of the cinematography and the relatively slow pacing of the plan to escape. But you can't break free, you want to stick with Leterrier and mentally urge him to escape from his appointment with the firing squad.

The last 20 minutes is perhaps marginally weaker compared to the rest of the film and Bresson does have an annoying habit of playing the same extract of dreary music when our prisoner wonders whether his escape attempt will ever happen.

BUT you must somehow track down this film. It is a classic film-noir with a heavy European styling, understated but consuming & passionate.

*****/*****

So far with Robert Bresson's films I've seen aside from this one (Au Hasard Balthazar and Pickpocket), I've tried to really get accustomed, if that's the word, to his very stark style where the details are not just important, they're everything to his style and craft. And his actors, of course, are worked almost to death with countless takes, making them in a state of mind that Bresson exactly wants. With A Man Escaped, I think these elements finally really work at their finest pitch. Some even go as far as to call this a 'perfect film', whatever that could mean (it's all based on point of view, as someone could even say that about any film when you think about it).

It's also unlike any other escape-from-prison movie I've ever seen. After seeing it once years ago and finding it a little too sparse, and with so much inner monologue, that I didn't really know entirely what to think of it, even as I knew I really got enthralled in spots. The second time around, however, really knocked me on my feet, through almost no full-on dramaticism, yet lots of it at the same time. If you're looking for the spirit-soaring Shawshank Redemption it may, or may not depending on your taste in film in general, disappoint.

Bresson is after something else much richer in context, which is to make a very technically proficient, carefully shot and balanced film that is actually sometimes very conventional, but with the details- that's the key- and the voice of a documentary. This is basically as simple as any given documentary you might find, as it is based squarely on the memoir of Andre Devigny (here called Fontaine and played by Francois Leterrier), and at the start Bresson explicitly states he is telling the tale as it happened. This, to be sure, is open to interpretation, as no one story can 100% be the entirely of how it happened. But it's this intention to get it down as it happened from Fontaine's point of view that makes the story, and especially the film, interesting. It's even gripping in what one would define or suggest as minimalism. But really it's not very minimalistic when compared to other movies. Very quickly, one gets inside Fontaine's consciousness, feels every creak as the Nazi soldiers walk by his room, the care he has to take in his preparations paramount. It works brilliantly by just cutting all the dramatic fat off the plate; the situation with this Nazi prison war camp could be any den of a hellish prison, where those in charge on guard are not seen (unlike many of the prisoners in close-up, we never even see a Nazi's face, only the boots and helmets and guns), and the conditions are such that just having a pencil can have you shot.

Thus Fontaine, soon assisted by a very young inmate Jost (Charles Le Claniche) hatch their escape, and when it does happen (and by the title you might be able to guess what happens at the end, though that's not entirely the point) all that led up to it makes it totally thrilling without an ounce of music or any extreme theatrics done on Bresson's part. All that led up to it, by the way, is contributed to by the performances, these performances that do seem as if they're being portrayed by actors clinging to life, which is a perfect move. Leterrier doesn't ever really emote in the way we'd see in a melodrama, and even when he cries he still lies in his bed with an expressionless face. But no matter, this makes every little expression in his eyes all the more meaningful then. This too with some other actors like Le Claniche and Ertaud's Orsini. And part of this documentary feel is contributed too by some others who don't even seem totally like actors, even as they're still believable. Finally, the music from Mozart, which chimes in its somber, elegiac tones, comes in when we really aren't expecting it, as Bresson almost denies the viewer the usual musical uplift or emotional connectedness to it- that is, unless it's totally necessary.

It's these same things that Bresson denies the audience that makes A Man Escaped really compelling, daring film-making, the kind that makes me very glad there's still some human spirit depicted well in films. This is illustrated at times through the meticulous use of narrative. The way narration usually works best is either when it goes all out ala Goodfellas, or if it's only once in a great while for punctuation. Narration can also go horribly wrong (i.e. the recent Black Dahlia), but not here, where after a while it's almost needed with the bits of details as much as just a few general thoughts.

I also liked, in the Sartre sense, how existentialism played a role in this escape, as religion only comes up in small pieces, and one line particular- "Easy? It would be to easy if God handled everything"- kind of sums up Fontaine's outlook on the situation. If this isn't done, he'll be shot. This kind of very basic, elemental need on the character, and on Bresson to tell it with his constant control of composition and form, is still to this day affecting. It can also, I think, work as both a fine tale of resistance during the French occupation, a film almost made FOR the French, and it can also work as something beyond the usual prison escape movies.

After watching Mouchette recently, Robert Bresson's minimalist style was starting to grow on me. Although I found it sterile in something like Pickpocket, I've now found where his emotion comes from. A Man Escaped provides a thrilling setup right from the start. Whereas Pickpocket's best scenes were the ones featuring its title, A Man Escaped is constantly about the protagonist's slow progression to a breakout and it's a masterclass in designing a resourceful character. It could hold onto cheap tension, but it trusts subtle touches instead and results in a very mature approach. It's all about how humanity at its core has a need for escape as an act of self-preservation and how far they will go to get it to the point of considering killing someone else. This film is definitely Bresson's craft at his best but it's a little too dry to call it a favourite and not as emotional as Mouchette, if more psychologically interesting. Even so, Bresson sure does find a way to make his films feel much longer than they are with his crossfading editing technique. Is this the best his style can get or is there more awaiting me? We'll have to see.

8/10

Robert Bresson's works are productions which don't intend to satisfy expectations of the audience, they are primarily art-house projects. Bresson's films thus are non-commercial, he only uses non-professional actors, rarely integrates music, besides his shots are realistic, lack action and instead focus on the essential, there are no embellishments to sell a scene. What you see on the screen is understated, minimalistic, carefully planned efficiency - less is more.

All these things apply to "A Man Escaped", based on a true story, and the title already tells you the whole plot. It's as basic as that, and miraculously this does the trick: In between the daily prison routines we get to know how our protagonist works on a plan to make the impossible happen, piece by piece he progresses, and the longer his efforts last the more we identify with the endeavor and root for him. Bresson's direction is restrained, unobtrusive, the pace is slow, dictated by prison life regularity, yet the film turns out to be extremely suspenseful in its simplicity, despite or maybe because it doesn't shun to return to the same images and camera perspectives again and again. Sound plays a key role and of course the recitative voice-over, which holds it all together. I guess it's safe to say that a man indeed escaped movie making conventions with this one and succeeded - chapeau bas à Robert Bresson.

Additional note: The other film on par with Bresson's mastery as far as prison escape films are concerned is of course Jacques Becker's seminal "Le Trou" (1960). Realism dominates that one as well, though "Le Trou" has more psychological drama thanks to the group dynamics involved. Despite the somewhat different angle "Le Trou" is as riveting, intense and suspenseful throughout as Bresson's take on the subject. The players are mainly non-actors in this one as well, the emotions are palpable, all sounds in the film are diegetic (always occurring on screen) etc., you see the parallels. To sum it up: Edge-of-the-seat cinema without distracting gimmicks. Two Frenchmen who knew how to do it!

Lyon 1943, Moncluc prison: Lieutenant Fontaine (Leterrier), a man of the Resistance sentenced to death, meticulously prepares his escape from Nazi prison. Inspired by an autobiographical article by André Devigny (who followed the shooting as a technical consultant), the film is preceded by a sign which reads: «This story is true. I'll tell you how it is, without ornaments>>. For his fourth feature film (the first without professional actors) Bresson reduces historical references to a minimum and concentrates his attention on the atmosphere and on man's metaphysical relationship with freedom: to do so he eliminates everything that appears superfluous to him, arriving at construct the film with a long series of close-ups and very close-ups of the protagonists' faces, but above all of the hands and objects with which Fontaine tries to prepare his escape (a spoon, a bedspring, the pieces of cloth that will form a rope ). Mozart's Mass in C minor counterpoints a succession of faded shots mixed with the real noises of footsteps or keys.

It is a true story which Lieutenant Devigny published in 1954 in the "Figaro Litéraire" An adventurous plot thus becomes for Robert Bresson (in his most creative moment) a meditation on life, human relationships, man's aspirations. There is more tension than in a Hitchcock thriller (moreover obtained with a language that is more bare , less melodramatic and could not be "spectacular").

Would this film have been as compelling I wonder had it been cast with professional actors? Philosophy student Francois Letterier whose face combines sensitivity and spiritual strength is the ideal choice as Devigny. The use of Mozart's 'Kyrie' is inspired and no doubt reflects Bresson's belief that the Hand of God aided Devigny in his miraculous escape from Montluc. The subtitle 'The Spirit breathes where it will' from St. John's Gospel suggests a clear link with Bresson's previous 'Journal d'un Curé de Campagne'. Technically the film is faultless and as Truffaut observed: "It does not contain a single useless shot or a scene that could be cut or shortened." Few films can truly be called 'sublime'. This is surely one of them.

Bresson's stark visual style is well-suited to this drama about a French POW in a Nazi prison. As there is little exposition, the setting and characters are not well explained. Who are the three guys walking in the courtyard who help the hero? During the whole planning stage of the escape, the layout of the prison is never clear. Although they threaten to, the guards never inspect the cells. The story moves very slowly. Watching the prisoners go through the same routine day after day becomes rather tiresome, as does the overuse of fades. Perhaps Bresson is trying to show the drudgery of prison life, but it does not make for interesting cinema. Things do perk up towards the end.