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Critics Consensus: A Man Escaped is blockbuster Bresson, a well-acted POW drama that builds with subtle, seat-gripping tension.
Critic Consensus: A Man Escaped is blockbuster Bresson, a well-acted POW drama that builds with subtle, seat-gripping tension.
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.
It's coolly comforting to recall how the innocence that lay shattered in the wake of World War II wasn't America's alone - just as it's heartening to rediscover the improbable beauty within the bleak scenario of A Man Escaped.
Robert Bresson's story of an imprisoned and condemned French Resistance fighter who plans an escape with his teenage cellmate is one of the great classics of European art cinema.
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 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.
Hands down one of the best prison escape movies ever made. Period.
This is a really interesting movie I saw for a class, but I didn't get to see the end. It is really inventive with the sounds and cinematography. If that interests you, I highly recommend this movie.
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