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Francois Leterrier,
Francois Leterrier,
Roland Monod,
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Robert Bresson,
Robert Bresson
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: New Yorker Video
: Classics, Drama, Foreign, Prison, France, Classic Drama, Classic Drama
: 100 min.
: French
: English
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In a genre crowded with quality films, director Robert Bresson's POW drama has become legendary, in part because it strips down the experience of a man desperate to escape to the essentials. That's in keeping with the approach Bresson took with all of his films. The filmmaker, who spent a year in a German prison camp during World War II, based this story on the experiences of Andre Devigny, a French Resistance fighter sent in 1943 to the infamous prison in Lyons, where 7,000 of the 10,000 prisoners housed there died either by natural means or by execution. Lt. Fontaine (Francois Leterrier) is certain that execution awaits him, and he almost immediately begins planning his escape, using homemade tools and an ingenuity for detecting the few weaknesses in the prison's structure and routine. For a time, he goes it alone, then takes on a partner, but only reluctantly. Fontaine does get some help from a couple of prisoners allowed to stroll in the exercise yard, but for the most part he is a figure in isolation. For Bresson, the process of escape is all, and in simplifying his narrative he ratchets up the tension, creating a film story of survival that many feel is without peer. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
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| A beautiful story
by RAH49
June 2, 2005 - 2:20 PM PDT
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6 out of 7 members found this review helpful
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| This movie shows what you can do with a spare script, a handful of actors, and a profound story. It is worth all of the over-produced Hollywood escape movies put together. A film for the ages. |
| Pure Bresson
by talltale
February 10, 2005 - 2:30 PM PST
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5 out of 5 members found this review helpful
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| A MAN ESCAPED is another of those French classics I had heard about nearly all my life and finally determined that it was time to actually see. It does not disappoint. I'm appreciating Bresson's work more as I age, and this quiet but intensely interesting movie about a prisoner and his attempt to escape from a French jail (during WWII, when France was occupied by the Germans) is cinema unadorned and true. My only quibble--but it's a big one--is why the director refuses to show us (possible spoiler ahead) a killing. He shows us, in minute detail, every other step in the process but balks big-time at this--clearly the most important and powerful in the entire escape. Was it Bresson's religiosity that prevented him? Or the fact that other moments could be shown truthfully, while this one would have to be staged? Or because this was clearly the most difficult task for the hero (who tells us so in his voice-over), and thus the audience somehow needed to be spared? Whatever: the scene comes off today as far too timid. I'm not asking for blood and guts, mind you. But something as utterly vital as these few moments ought not to be dispensed with by keeping the camera--for the first time--at a discrete distance around the corner, particularly when the director chooses to leave nothing else in the film to our imagination. What might it have been like to see the hero's face as he does something that--on one level, at least--is just a tad un-heroic? We'll never know. |
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GreenCine Member Rating
(Average 8.29)
85 Votes
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