A Man Escaped
ROBERT BRESSON, 1956
4.5 STARS OUT OF 5
Might well be the perfect prison break film. Initially, I'm thinking,
Great, another war time prison/POW film, just having seen La Grande Illusion by Renoir a few films ago on the S&S list, but this is a totally different beast. All we have are captured WWII French lieutenant, Fontaine, his cell, his ingenuity, and fellow inmates, most of whom don't have the guts or resourcefulness to do what he's doing. Not that I can blame them, what a terrifying situation they are all in. My buddy and I joked that Fontaine got out of prison, then sired a boy who we'd later know as MacGyver. He's on that level of problem-solving.
In this visually spare portrayal, director Robert Bresson presents the situation and lets our natural curiosity and sense of anticipation fill in the emotional spaces. This is my first Bresson, and I love his approach. For the vast majority of the film, we are attached to Fontaine, so we only see as much of the prison as he can, thereby only being able to know how sound his escape plan his by what he can hear, see, and figure out from the people with whom he communicates through message, talking through the bars, and tapping in Morse code on the wall. Fracois Letterrier, a non-professional actor, does a job as Fontaine, who we get to know far better through the first-person narration that spares us emotional highs and lows in favor of a very matter-of-fact telling of his escape in retrospect. There is nothing incredible required of the actor here, perfect for Bresson's m.o. No matter, I found the script/screenplay, especially the narration, so on-point and the process of him going from imprisoned to free so engaging and rewarding, that I didn't have to think much about what the camera was doing or what the quality of acting was, nothing, I just was in that cell and I just knew Fontaine needed to get out. He could've been the worst man on Earth, a serial killer, a turncoat whose handler disavowed him, or perhaps he could've been decent, it never crossed my mind to care until well after the film ended. I like that. What an experience.
A lot of the films on this list have had a good deal of melodrama, which can work, but isn't necessarily my favorite approach to writing and directing films. The ones I really got into despite it, like Yi Yi, are yet about something bigger than the melodrama as presented. With that said, the absence of any such melodrama in A Man Escaped is totally refreshing. It makes you think about how emotionally manipulative films can be, for the better and the worse. That's not meant as criticism, films should make you
feel things, but with this film, Bresson doesn't dictate where your emotions ought to go, which is so different from most works of cinema. Even today, films seem to provide us with an emotional road map, be they popular works such as the MCU films or indie dramas. We could do with a few more films in the spirit of A Man Escaped.
I was going to end this with: It effortlessly gets its hooks into you, but it's better I didn't go there, right? But, I mean, you know,
hooks? Get it? Haha? Better than that somewhat hyperbolic conclusion I went with, or at least maybe. Film's really CINECAST!ing good, though.