Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut

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.

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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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.

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.