Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (A Man Escaped) (1956)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Ken S

  
  Hands down one of the best prison escape movies ever made. Period.

• AJ V

  
  This is a really interesting movie I saw for a class, but I didn't get to see the end. It is really inventive with the sounds and cinematography. If that interests you, I highly recommend this movie.

• Stella D

  
  a stunning prison drama, based on the memoirs of a french pow who escaped the nazis and a sentence of death. we witness every painstaking detail of his plan and it's execution. i must say i greatly admire bresson's directing style, using untrained actors and a minimalist… More
  a stunning prison drama, based on the memoirs of a french pow who escaped the nazis and a sentence of death. we witness every painstaking detail of his plan and it's execution. i must say i greatly admire bresson's directing style, using untrained actors and a minimalist approach with riveting results.

• Pierluigi P

  
  A minimalist work of powerful and dramatic precision. Bresson tells the story of a prison break without any contrivance nor decoration, with naturalism and painstaking attention to the sound, the enviroment, and the main character's thoughts. the suspense is nail-biting, and the… More
  A minimalist work of powerful and dramatic precision. Bresson tells the story of a prison break without any contrivance nor decoration, with naturalism and painstaking attention to the sound, the enviroment, and the main character's thoughts. the suspense is nail-biting, and the subject matter is profound. cinema in its purest form.

• Eric B

  
  An intimate, compelling tale of one man's meticulous plan to escape from a Nazi prison. The film defies formula in a number of interesting ways, including its sparse score of refined Mozart, its well-mannered set of prisoners, the omission of Jewish issues and the lack of a… More
  An intimate, compelling tale of one man's meticulous plan to escape from a Nazi prison. The film defies formula in a number of interesting ways, including its sparse score of refined Mozart, its well-mannered set of prisoners, the omission of Jewish issues and the lack of a snarling guard/warden positioned as pivotal nemesis. Additionally, all the violence occurs offscreen (though it still retains a proper sense of drama). I'm often hostile to the use of narration, particularly in older films, but it works beautifully in this case. The emphasis on sound is generally worth noting -- so much time is devoted to subtle perceptions of footsteps, door latches, knocks, scrapes, bicycle wheels and more. Director Robert Bresson's brief introduction says "I've told [the story] as it happened, without embellishment." Precisely. This is airtight filmmaking.

• Walter M

  
  [font=Century Gothic][color=darkslateblue]"A Man Escaped" starts out in occupied France, 1943. A member of the French resistance, Fontaine, has been captured by the Nazis and makes a hasty break for it before being recaptured. His next escape attempt is going to be better… More
  [font=Century Gothic][color=darkslateblue]"A Man Escaped" starts out in occupied France, 1943. A member of the French resistance, Fontaine, has been captured by the Nazis and makes a hasty break for it before being recaptured. His next escape attempt is going to be better planned, though.[/color][/font] [font=Century Gothic][color=#483d8b][/color][/font] [font=Century Gothic][color=#483d8b]"A Man Escaped" is a skillfully directed film by Robert Bresson. The movie is very detailed in the everyday life of the prisoners and of the preparations for the escape attempt. It is continually tense and suspenseful, despite most of the film taking place in Fontaine's cell. Nearly all of the film is seen from the prisoner's point of view. There is an excellent use of sound to convey what is happening outside of his range of sight. [/color][/font]

• Marcus W

  
  This is film-making stripped right down. There's nothing flashy here, nobody gets clever with the cinematography, and the acting is average. And it's the film's simplicity that boosts it. The pacing is slow, but this is a true story of a prison-break - and these things… More
  This is film-making stripped right down. There's nothing flashy here, nobody gets clever with the cinematography, and the acting is average. And it's the film's simplicity that boosts it. The pacing is slow, but this is a true story of a prison-break - and these things do take time. Not that it ever drags. Every moment of the film is focussed on the escape. A rewarding and engrossing watch if you're prepared to let it slowly sink in.

• Wu C

  
  The most accessible Bresson I've seen. I love that most of the narrative is driven by the lead's voice over.

• MJS M

  
  A 1956 prison film from the acclaimed French director, Robert Bresson. The only other Bresson film I?d seen was Au Hasard Balthazar, which was super arty and super boring even for me. Balthazar is a movie so boring that even Ingmar Bergman said he couldn?t sit through it, and I?d… More
  A 1956 prison film from the acclaimed French director, Robert Bresson. The only other Bresson film I?d seen was Au Hasard Balthazar, which was super arty and super boring even for me. Balthazar is a movie so boring that even Ingmar Bergman said he couldn?t sit through it, and I?d sort of assumed that the rest of his filmography would be more of the same. Fortunately I was dead wrong, if this film is any indication. This is a brilliant, taut thriller about a man planning to escape from the Nazi jail he was put into for taking part in the resistance. It?s like what The Shawshank Redemption would have been like if it only focused on Andy chiseling through the wall, and almost nothing else. This may sound boring but it isn?t, it?s really fun watching him plan everything out and watch as everything becomes more complicated by the day. In order to keep down on dead silences, the main character narrates the whole film explaining his situation and thought process. Bresson expertly builds up tension throughout the film, introducing more and more threat of the man being caught. The whole film plays on the confined space the man is in and the routines he?s forced into to build something of a rhythm to the whole affair. It?s an extremely lean film, there are no superfluous characters, no unneeded subplots, and nothing at all to remove the laser-sited focus the film has to it?s raw human story of? a man escaping.

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