Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (A Man Escaped)1957
Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (A Man Escaped) (1957)
Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (A Man Escaped) Photos
Movie Info
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Cast

as Lt. Fontaine

as Francois Jost

as De Leiris

as Blanchet

as Orsini

as Francois Jost

as Terry

as Hebrard

as Le Prisonnier X

as Prisoner No. 110

as Chief Warder

as German Intelligence Officer

as German Escort
News & Interviews for Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (A Man Escaped)
Critic Reviews for Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (A Man Escaped)
All Critics (32) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (32) | Rotten (0) | DVD (3)
It is Bresson's unadorned, almost ascetic style that lifts the tale beyond a genre piece.

A Man Escaped masterfully constructs the spaces -- physical and mental -- inhabited by Lt. Fontaine (played in a low-key register by an untrained actor, François 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?

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.
Audience Reviews for Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (A Man Escaped)
Bresson is not interested in big emotions or catharsis (he doesn't even mind telling us the end of the film in the title) but rather drawn to details and method, and so he crafts a meticulous and tremendously absorbing classic that depicts each step taken by the protagonist to reach his objective.
Super Reviewer
Based on the true account of prisoner of war Andre Devigny, director and writer Robert Bresson recreated the isolation, intrigue, and tension of a prison break. Our hero, Fontaine, is played by Franncois Leterrier in his first ever acting role. His performance is particularly monotone, devoid of the emotion of a man on the very brink of death. This shows the calculation behind the plot he is hatching and his calm demeanor while under the Nazis' thumb. What makes the film especially amazing is the step by step processing in his creation of tools from his cell, including smashing lamps for grappling hooks, tearing up shirts for braided rope, and slowly chipping away at wooden hatches with a dull prison spoon. The film remains terse without a score, using silence often to its advantage in creating an often flexible sense of danger for the protagonist. Sound effects are pivotal in the climax and let us know about the action offscreen. Because this is a prison, that works well with the story, showing that prisoners aren't aware of the facets of the system around them. The Nazis aren't shown for their historical villainy, but more as simple captors for these mostly innocent prisoners of war, and the prison itself is more important towards their state of well-being than even the firing squads in the courtyard. It's really a very thorough prison break film and even in the end we worry for the sake of the twosome.
Super Reviewer
Hands down one of the best prison escape movies ever made. Period.
Super Reviewer
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