A Man Escaped

Infobox_Film
name = A Man Escaped


imdb_id = 0049902
writer = Robert Bresson
starring = François Leterrier
Charles Le Clainche
Maurice Beerblock
Roland Monod
director = Robert Bresson
producer = Alain Poiré
Jean Thuillier
distributor =
released = August 26, 1957
runtime = 99 min
language = French
budget =

"A Man Escaped or: The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth" (original title: "Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut") is a 1956 French film directed by Robert Bresson. It is based on the memoirs of André Devigny, a prisoner of war held at Fort Montluc during World War II. The protagonist of the film is called Fontaine. The second part of the title comes from the Bible, John 3:8, and in English it is worded this way only in the Authorized King James Version (more recent translations using words like "wants" or "pleases" instead of "listeth"). Bresson, like Devigny and the character Fontaine, was imprisoned by Nazis as a member of the French Resistance.

The soundtrack uses Mozart's Great Mass in C minor, K. 427. [Donald Richie, "Bresson and Music" "Robert Bresson" ed. James Quandt. Toronto: Toronto International Film Festival Group (1998): 300. "He employed Mozart, the Kyrie Elieson [sic] of the Mass in C Minor, music which had a "colour," he said, matching that of the film. ... The music is heard in seven sequences, in all of which the prisoners are communicating with the condemned man, when they are no longer alone."]

Plot

After the establishing shot of Montluc prison, but before the opening credits, the camera rests on a plaque commemorating the 7,000 men who died there at the hands of the Nazis.

On the way to jail, Fontaine (François Leterrier), a member of the French Resistance, seizes an opportunity to escape his Nazi captors, but is soon apprehended, beaten for his attempt and taken to the jail. At first he is incarcerated in a cell on the first floor of the prison, and he is able to talk to three French men who are exercising in the courtyard. The men get Fontaine a safety pin, which gives him the ability to unlock his handcuffs. This turns out to be useless because, in reassigning him to a cell on the top floor, the guards remove his handcuffs anyway.

Once in cell 107 on the top floor, Fontaine begins inspecting the door and figures out that the boards are joined with low quality wood. Using an iron spoon he deliberately neglects to turn in after his meal, he begins to chip away at the wood. After weeks of work, he is able to remove three boards from the door, roam the hallway, get back in his cell and restore the appearance of the door.

Fontaine is not the only one trying to escape. Orsini (Jacques Ertaud) makes an attempt but doesn't get very far because of the lack of hooks on his rope. Orsini is tossed back in his cell and beaten up by the Nazis, and is thought to be executed within a few days. Fontaine is not deterred from his plan. He takes apart the wires of his mattress, takes hooks from the illumination and fashions himself ropes with hooks. The other prisoners grow somewhat skeptical of his escape plans, saying he is taking too long.

After being taken to headquarters to be informed that he is sentenced to execution, Fontaine is taken back to jail and put back in the same cell. Soon he gets a cellmate, François Jost (Charles Le Clainche), a young man who joined the German army. Fontaine is not sure whether he can trust Jost (whom he sees speaking on friendly terms with a Nazi guard) and realizes he'll either have to kill him or take him with him in the escape. In the end, after Jost admits he too wants to escape, he chooses to trust the boy and tells him the plan. One night, they escape by going to the roof of the building, roping down to the courtyard, killing the Nazi guard there, climbing the wall and then roping to an adjacent building. They walk away from the prison undetected.

DVD release

On Region 1 DVD, the film is available from New Yorker Video. Other Bresson films are in the Criterion Collection, but not this one. The DVD has English subtitles for the French dialogue but not for any of the spoken German.

References

External links

* [http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Metro/9384/films/man_escaped/truffaut.htm "A Man Escaped" review by François Truffaut] , from "The Films in My Life" (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978), p. 193-196.
*imdb title|id=0049902|title=A Man Escaped
*rotten-tomatoes|id=man_escaped|title=A Man Escaped