It is Bresson's unadorned, almost ascetic style that lifts the tale beyond a genre piece.
A Man Escaped
Robert Bresson's Prize Winning Film
1956 · 1h 41m · Not Rated
Drama, Thriller
Directed by
Robert Bresson
Overview
A captured French Resistance fighter during World War II engineers a daunting escape from prison.
Director and cast
- Robert Bresson Director
- François Leterrier as Fontaine
- Charles Le Clainche as Jost
- Maurice Beerblock as Blanchet
- Roland Monod as Priest of Leiris
- Jacques Ertaud as Orsini
- Jean Paul Delhumeau as Hebrard
- Roger Treherne as Terry
- Jean Philippe Delamarre as Le Prisonnier 110
- Jacques Oerlemans as Chief Warden
- Klaus Detlef Grevenhorst as L'Officier de L'Abwehr
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
A Man Escaped masterfully constructs the spaces -- physical and mental -- inhabited by Lt. Fontaine (played in a low-key register by an untrained actor, Francois Leterrier).
The prisoner's lonely ardor is enhanced by Mozart's Mass in C Minor; the ending of the movie, as the music wells up, is pure elation.
The best of all prison-escape movies, it reconstructs the very notion of freedom through offscreen sounds and defines salvation in terms of painstakingly patient and meticulous effort.
Even the title dispenses with unnecessary frills: A man escaped. What more do you need to know?
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