Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (A Man Escaped) (1956)
Average Rating: 9/10
Reviews Counted: 30
Fresh: 30 | Rotten: 0
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 9.2/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 0
No consensus yet.
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Average Rating: 4.3/5
User Ratings: 5,235
Movie Info
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
Aug 26, 1957 Wide
May 25, 2004
Criterion Collection
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Cast
-
François Leterrier
Lt. Fontaine -
Roland Monod
De Leiris the Pastor -
Jacques Ertaud
Orsini -
-
Cesar Gattegno
Le Prisonnier X -
Charles LeClainche
Francois Jost -
Maurice Beerblock
Blanchet -
Roger Treherne
Terry
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All Critics (30) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (30) | Rotten (0) | DVD (6)
It is Bresson's unadorned, almost ascetic style that lifts the tale beyond a genre piece.
Top CriticThe 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?
Watching a film like A Man Escaped"is like a lesson in the cinema. It teaches by demonstration all the sorts of things that are not necessary in a movie. By implication, it suggests most of the things we're accustomed to are superfluous.
This is not the sort of picture that one should view without knowing what it is. The strain is hard and the reward is limited. But it is a fine reflection of a cruel experience.
Not just the greatest prison escape film ever made, it is one of the greatest films of any kind ever made. And the coolest thing is, Bresson would get even better.
Coming from a director renowned as spartanly anti-dramatic, the film's escape is almost preternaturally gripping.
One of Bresson's most sublime and understated films, in a career that consists of a series of meditational masterpieces that minutely and compassionately examine the human condition.
Bresson's masterpiece is still a pinnacle in French cinema.
Bresson outdoes nearly every escape film you've ever seen, using little more than the face of Francois Leterrier and elemental off-screen sound.
A Man Escaped seems to be one of the few Bresson films that both his fans and detractors can agree on.
If it's not as emotionally haunting as Au Hasard Balthazar or Mouchette, it remains a powerful, compelling portrait of discipline, and humanity.
It's a wonder that so stark and minimal a film can create such potent feelings, images and moments that linger so persistently, divine intimations that seem so inescapable.
The best POW film ever.
Masterpiece - and strikingly original.
Bresson accentuates the metaphysical aspects of the narrative, turning the story into a meditation on existential and spiritual themes rendered in precise, physical terms.
A hero for all time.
It takes a hell of a film to maintain a high level of suspense even when it gives away the ending in its very title. Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped is one such film
Audience Reviews for Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (A Man Escaped)
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Foreign Titles
- A Man Escaped (Un condamne a mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle ou il veut) (DE)
- A Man Escaped (Un condamne a mort s'est échappé) (UK)
