Main Cast: Francois Leterrier, Roland Monod, Jacques Ertaud, Roger Planchon
Release Year: 1956
Country: FR
Run Time: 102 minutes
Plot
In a genre crowded with quality films, director Robert Bresson's POW drama has become legendary, in part because it strips down the experience of a man desperate to escape to the essentials. That's in keeping with the approach Bresson took with all of his films. The filmmaker, who spent a year in a German prison camp during World War II, based this story on the experiences of Andre Devigny, a French Resistance fighter sent in 1943 to the infamous prison in Lyons, where 7,000 of the 10,000 prisoners housed there died either by natural means or by execution. Lt. Fontaine (Francois Leterrier) is certain that execution awaits him, and he almost immediately begins planning his escape, using homemade tools and an ingenuity for detecting the few weaknesses in the prison's structure and routine. For a time, he goes it alone, then takes on a partner, but only reluctantly. Fontaine does get some help from a couple of prisoners allowed to stroll in the exercise yard, but for the most part he is a figure in isolation. For Bresson, the process of escape is all, and in simplifying his narrative he ratchets up the tension, creating a film story of survival that many feel is without peer. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
Review
After fellow French director Jean Renoir set the standard for POW dramas with Grand Illusion, as well as codifying many of the genre's trademark details, Robert Bresson went his own way with this film, based on a true story and informed by his own experiences during World War II. In Grand Illusion (and many films to follow, such as Stalag 17 and The Great Escape), the camaraderie among the prisoners and the relationships between them and their captors are as important a part of the story as the prisoners' attempt to escape. Bresson will have none of that; his Lt. Fontaine is, like many a Bresson protagonist, going it alone. Here there are no community meetings, no tense or even jocular exchanges between captive officers and their captor counterparts. Much of the film is free of dialogue and music (Mozart is employed occasionally); the sounds you hear are one man scraping, whittling, and carving his way out of his cell. That Fontaine takes on a partner in this enterprise only adds to the tension; who's to say this man won't make a mistake or, worse, report Fontaine to the authorities in hopes of better treatment. The film has the austerity of a documentary but ultimately the shapeliness of a work of dramatic art. There's nothing ingratiating about it, which is not to say that it's inaccessibly remote. Bresson and Lt. Fontaine each work pretty much their own way to achieve a goal, whether it's making a film or a good escape. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
A Man Escaped or: The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth (French: 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.
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.
Fontaine in handcuffs after a failed attempt to escape.
On the way to jail, Fontaine (François Leterrier), a member of the French Resistance, seizes an opportunity to escape his Nazi captors when the car carrying him is forced to stop, but he is soon apprehended, beaten for his attempt, handcuffed 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 obtain a safety pin for Fontaine, which gives him the ability to unlock his handcuffs. This turns out to be pointless 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 together with low quality wood. Using a steel spoon he deliberately neglects to return after a 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 prisoner trying to escape. Orsini (Jacques Ertaud) makes an attempt, but fails to get very far because of the lack of hooks on his rope. Orsini is tossed back in his cell and beaten up by the guards, 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 sixteen-year-old young man who had 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 gaining access 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, and the film ends.
New Yorker Video released the film on Region 1 DVD in 2004. Artificial Eye brought out a Region 2 version in the UK in 2008.
References
^ 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."
^Cunneen, Joseph E. (2004). "The Spirit Blows through Prison". Robert Bresson: A Spiritual Style in Film. Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. 58-70. ISBN0826416055.
