A Man Escaped (1956) Robert Bresson

A Man Escaped (1956) Robert Bresson [1:39]

Criterion Collection Blu-ray and DVD

Spine #650

Anyone approaching Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped with any thoughts of films like The Shawshank Redemption, The Great Escape, Cool Hand Luke, The Defiant Ones, or just about any other famous prison film will be sorely disappointed. It’s not really our fault. We’ve been fed so many prison escape flicks over the past century or so that we’ve come to expect big stars, excitement, sensationalism and seconds-from-being-caught heroics. 

By contrast, A Man Escaped contains no-name actors. (They really weren’t even actors, just people Bresson thought were genuine for their roles.) The majority of the film takes place in one jail cell. Most of the dialogue consists of voice-overs. And almost all of the violence takes place off-screen. 

What kind of a prison-break flick is that?

Again, according to our expectations, not much of one. But Bresson quickly gets us inside the mind of Fontaine (François Leterrier), a man who, in the opening scene, has been captured by the Gestapo in German-occupied Lyon during World War II. In a sequence of shots worthy of Hitchcock, Bresson cuts between an outwardly deadpan Fontaine sitting in the back of the car, glancing at the door handle, looking outside the window to check his surroundings. He’s constantly aware of the Gestapo officer on his right, but he’s thinking about the door and the speed of the car and the amount of time it would take if he jumped now or later. Without having said a word, we now know what kind of character we’re dealing with. 

In prison, Fontaine faces a bleak reality, yet knows that in order to survive and even escape, he has to do something. And he does. 

In a typical prison film, we’d see Fontaine slowly and methodically working on an escape plan while being verbally (or physically) abused by one of the guards. Or we’d see Fontaine’s lawyer/wife/mother/etc. pleading to get him out. Or we’d see some other plot device designed to heighten the tension artificially. None of that happens here, yet the tension becomes almost unbearable as Fontaine inches his plan along, hour by hour, day by day. But as much as Fontaine is clearly attempting to manipulate the materials at his disposal, he cannot control what’s going on outside his door. (Sometimes he doesn’t even know what those things are.) The unexpected can happen at any time: a guard approaching while Fontaine is working; the prisoner next door no longer responding to Fontaine’s tapping on the wall; gunfire heard in the distance. 

A Man Escaped is a slow burn, one that defies our expectations and refuses to cater to patterns of sensationalism. It is also a quietly intense, often spiritual film that will resonate with you long after the credits fade. 

5/5