I love prison movies. Lock up enough pissed-off people and force them to interact, and you’re bound to get good conflict. A prison is a tinderbox for human drama. What I didn’t realize until watching A Man Escaped is that prison escape movies, although also prison movies, operate in an entirely different way.
In a prison drama, the prison is a setting. In a prison escape film, the prison is the antagonist. The conflict doesn’t come from what’s within the walls, but from the walls themselves. How do you break through prison walls? Patience. No film better exemplifies that than Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped.
Based on the memoir Le vent souffle où il veut (The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth) by André Devigny, A Man Escaped is about a French lieutenant named Fontaine (played by filmmaker François Leterrier), who is captured by the Gestapo during World War II. He is sent to Montluc Prison in Lyon, France, and later sentenced to death unless… he can become a man escaped.
What I appreciate about Bresson’s approach is the film’s singular focus on the escape. Sure, we get to meet a few other inmates, including Jost (Charles Le Clainche), whom Fontaine eventually escapes alongside, but the film is mostly about Fontaine’s methodical process of escaping Montluc.
Early on, Fontaine steals a spoon, sharpens it, and notices that the soft wood of his cell door can be chipped away. He starts chipping, then begins collecting materials to make rope. He convinces other prisoners to donate resources for the escape. He builds his plan piece by piece, and we experience it through simple visuals and plainspeak narration.
I remember reading about Bresson’s directing style when I watched his film Au Hasard Balthazar during my first Criterion Month eight years ago. Bresson preferred to use non-professional actors and have them perform their scenes so many times that all emotion was stripped away. The idea was that the audience could project their own feelings onto the characters.
This allows the film to focus on the mechanics of the story, while I, Joe Schmoe, project what Fontaine is feeling. What do I think he’s feeling? Well, fear, obviously. Fear of being caught and killed. But also determination. I mean, what else does he have to focus on besides finding a way out? I was mixed on Bresson’s soul-sucking technique in Au Hasard Balthazar, but I like it here. Fontaine has no time for tears; he’s got work to do.
A Man Escaped is economical. The film can be dry and repetitive, but that’s what prison is like sometimes. To watch and appreciate A Man Escaped requires patience, much like Fontaine painstakingly plotting his escape piece-by-piece.
Considered by some to be Bresson’s best film, A Man Escaped won Best Director at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. It’s been a huge inspiration to filmmakers like Krzysztof Kieślowski and Benny Safdie and was ranked #69 (nice) in Sight & Sound‘s 2012 critics’ poll of the greatest films ever made.
Where does it rank in my pantheon of prison films? I put it at number 11, just below Stalag 17. Sue me, I like to laugh a little. But if we’re talking specifically about prison escape movies? Hmm, maybe like 8? Maybe I, Joe Schmoe, am not projecting enough emotion into the film. Or maybe I need to learn a little patience.