Film: Un Condamné À Mort S'est Échappé (A Man Escaped)
Director: Robert Bresson
Country: France
Released: November 1956
Runtime: 99 minutes
Genre: Prison Escape
Studio: Gaumont
Influenced: Tarkovsky, Chantal Akerman, Bruno Dumont, Michel Haneke, Lynne Ramsay, Pedro Costa
Robert Bresson almost stands apart on his own island as a filmmaker. Ozu would be one of the closest comparisons I think, in that both directors rejected Hollywood techniques, developing their own minimalist, elliptical styles. Though I prefer Ozu's deep humanism and poetic melancholy, Bresson was the more radical of the two, rejecting "non-diegetic sound" (i.e. sound that would not be heard by the characters themselves), cutting the narrative until it was lean to the bone and imbuing his films with religious symbolism and an austere philosophy. He also took the neorealist approach of using non-professional actors, calling them "models", and asking them to repeat scenes again and again in robotic fashion until any shred of interior psychology or emotion was gone. The director insisted on shooting the entire film with a 50mm fixed focal length lens, to closely mimic human eyesight.
Bresson also had an appetite for telling stories of downtrodden loners who fight imprisonment and who eventually find redemption; in the case of A Man Escaped, the story was inspired by his own experience as a prisoner of the Nazis. The film's full title is Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut, literally translated as, "A Condemned Man Has Escaped or The Wind Blows Where It Wishes", the latter subtitle a quote from John 3:8. This Bible verse, which is handed to lead character Fontaine by the priest midway through the film, hints at the idea of being reborn, or a "second life", elevating the film to the status of allegory – many of us may be trapped in our personal prisons and seeking to escape.
Bresson based the film on the true story of French resistance fighter André Devigny, who escaped from the Nazi-run Montluc fortress prison during WWII. The film was shot both in a studio, where all the dialogue was recorded, and on location at Montluc. The central performance by François Leterrier as Fontaine is superbly subtle and understated, with any emotion and tension conveyed by his facial expressions, or via the voiceover narration, which adds to the film's sense of intimacy. The scientific precision with which Fontaine works out how to dismantle his prison door and how long it will take is quietly mind-blowing. Also impressive is the way he meticulously makes the rope.
Bresson's use of silence and sound is exemplary in the film. The use of Mozart and the recurring sound motifs of the prison enhance the emotion and tension. When Fontaine and Just escape, the masking of the gravel sound by the train is important to their success, and the strange squeaky sound they hear is a guard on a bike. Before that, we feel Fontaine’s dilemma of whether to tell his new cell mate Jost about his escape plans, or whether to kill him. Is he an informant (or "stool pigeon" as Fontaine says)? Or a friend? I also love how Fontaine’s relationship with the pessimistic Blanchet evolves during the film. By the end Blanchet is the one giving encouragement. Fontaine restores his hope and ours.
P.S. The fledgling filmmaker Louis Malle worked on the movie as an assistant. Years later, while editing his 1974 Lacombe, Lucien, Malle happened to watch A Man Escaped on television and recognized a striking similarity between the character of Jost in Bresson’s film and that of Lacombe in his own, as he recounts in a 1984 documentary. “It was sort of an unconscious homage to Bresson,” he says. Bresson put Malle in charge of Fontaine’s spoons, rope, hooks, and other escape implements, saying “Since you come from documentary, you take care of the props.”
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