A Man Escaped a Masterpiece

 

 

A Man Escaped or The Wind Blows Where It Listeth (1956)

Directed by Robert Bresson

Gaumont Film Company, 99 minutes, not-rated

★★★★★

 

If you’ve ever wondered why I watch a lot of classic movies, A Man Escaped is your answer. The late Roger Ebert declared it “like a lesson in the cinema” and the British magazine Sight and Sound listed in among the top 100 films of all time. That’s extraordinary praise for a film whose “action” occurs in a very short period of time.

 

Part of reputation of A Man Escaped rests upon the amazing use of light by director Robert Bresson. He has been called a “religious” director, though he labeled himself a “Christian atheist.” For what it’s worth, the film’s alternative title comes from the New Testament Gospel of John and one of the minor characters is a pastor. Bresson, who was once a photographer–not to be confused with Henri-Cartier Bresson–masterfully mixed darkness with slanted beams of light that illuminate in numerus meanings of that term. He is considered a pre-New Wave director, but A Man Escaped could be a film noir offering were it not a World War II thriller. Bresson’s camerawork dazzles. There are lots of verticals, horizontals, and acute angles, but Bresson seldom used wide angle lenses and preferred close shots. Moreover, Bresson often worked with non-trained actors. That allowed him to draw viewers into the cinematic experience rather than merely stargazing. All of these things come into play in A Man Escaped, which in many ways is a psychological drama enhanced by omniscient voiceovers. It is based on French Resistance fighter André Devigny and is in French with subtitles, but you need not worry: Dialogue is sparse as it takes place inside a Nazi-run prison where talking is verboten.

 

In the opening scene we do not yet know why Lt. Fontaine (François Leterrier) has been arrested by the Gestapo or why he isn’t handcuffed, but he makes his first escape attempt by trying to bolt the vehicle as it drives along a street in occupied Lyons. All that comes of that is a blood-covered entrance to prison on a stretcher. What unfolds next is a portrait of life on the inside: coded tapping on walls, furtive passing of notes, the sounds of machinegun executions, stolen conversation while washing or walking in circles for “exercise,” and the daily grind of carrying two buckets each morning: one to dump human waste and one for water. Unless an approved package comes, prisoners wear the same clothing every day–a blood-stained shirt in Fontaine’s case.

 

Prisoners are “interrogated” on a regular basis, though the files over which Nazi officials pore predetermines what their sentences will be, death in Fontaine’s case. What the Nazis have not discovered is that Fontaine is carefully planning his escape. In snippets of conversation and nighttime observations through peep holes, his fellow prisoners first think he’s deluded but come to think he might pull it off, especially after he fashions a stolen spoon that he sharpens to allow him to prise a few boards from his cell door. You’ll have to watch to see how he hides this from the guards. Ditto how he makes enough rope for the walls he would have to scale.

 

A complication arises. It’s 1943 and enough new prisoners arrive that it is necessary to double up in the small cells. His new roommate is 18-year-old François Jost. Rumors abound that some of the new arrivals, including Jost, are actually Nazi spies. Fontaine, though, has just two choices: convince Jost to escape with him or stay put and face a firing squad. Talk about your Hobbesian choices.

 

Do either of them survive? I’m not telling! I will say that seldom has such an interiorized and slow-paced film been so fraught with tension. Everything about A Man Escape exudes Bresson’s genius, from its emotion-delivering camera work to its stripped-to-the-bones script. Numerous critics noted the ways in which Bresson discarded everything he did not need. It reminded me of times in which I have an amazing meal with few ingredients. How are such things possible? Observe and learn.

 

Rob Weir