A Man Escaped (1956)
Directed by Robert Bresson
A captured French Resistance fighter during World War II engineers a daunting escape from prison.
10 connections found
View:
10 connections, in both directions
What critics compared A Man Escaped to
There are other films where the intensity of being inside someone is delivered: in so many Robert Bresson films—like Diary of a Country Priest, A Man Escaped, and Pickpocket—we inhabit the spiritual suspense of the central characters.
It even — or so some critics more imaginative than I have suggested — channels bits of minimalist French director Robert Bresson’s “A Man Escaped.”
Unlike the best prison dramas (like, say, Bresson’s A Man Escaped , Jean Genet’s Un chant d’amour, or any episode of Oz), sentimental twaddle like Shawshank Redemption (admittedly a few steps above a stinking pile of shit like The Last Castle ) says zilch about life behind bars and human interaction.
One does not expect to see some of Robert Bresson’s masterfully crafted A Man Escaped -type constructions to Finney’s escape.
Advertisement
As a war movie, it’s like smaller, more character-driven films, such as the 1956 Robert Bresson film “A Man Escaped,” or the 1938 Jean Renoir film “La Grande Illusion.”
Robert Bresson made a similar existential film, “A Man Escaped,” about a prisoner in a Nazi camp who spent every waking moment in his daily routine plotting his escape and therefore his survival.
There is the safecracking in Michael Mann's Thief (1981) and other heist movies, and the painstaking efforts of prison escapees, like those of Fontaine in A Man Escaped (1956).
There are direct allusions to films that have popped up frequently in Anderson’s oeuvre: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Man Escaped, L’enfance nue and many Lubitsch films.
Advertisement
Unlike such mock heroic films as John Sturges’ The Great Escape (1963) or Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 (1953), A Man Escaped never succumbs to the clichéd formulas of wartime dramas; as with all of Bresson’s films, A Man Escaped is a film unlike any other World War II prison escape drama, and takes us into the mind and heart of its protagonist with careful, incisive imagery, in which each shot and edit point is chosen with the greatest possible care.
Following Diary of a Country Priest by five years, A Man Escaped is the director's second film in "the Bresson mode," as well as, at 99 minutes, his second longest, and it requires as much self-acclimation from the viewer as any of his others.
As he did in his previous film, Diary of a Country Priest , Bresson simply puts into visual form the compelling story that already exists on the page, allowing the actions and events to drive the narrative.