Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (1956)
(A Man Escaped)
Country: FR
Technical: bw 101m
Director: Robert Bresson
Cast: François Leterrier, Charles Le Clainche, Maurice Beerblock
Synopsis:
A French resistance fighter painstakingly engineers his escape from Nazi custody in Montluc prison.
Review:
Bresson's minutely detailed, almost affectless, portrait of one man's imprisonment and escape is worth comparing with Becker's Le trou. One is a straightforward crime film, with suspense and individual performances to the fore, the other an ascetic case history of one man's fortitude in isolation (based on a true story). Bresson implies that Fontaine (the real-life Devigny) is closest to God, and receives his grace (the 'vent' of the subtitle). Sparing use of Mozart's Mass in C minor underlines the Catholic subtext, but more subtly also does the quasi-liturgical repetition of gestures and routines. Patience and faith matter as much as daring, for example in the hours spent stuck on the prison roof. The admiration in which the film is held stems from the director's arrival at a new cinematic language, one which admits imperfections such as unsynchronised sound and separates out the elements of production, so that they may coalesce in the mind of the viewer long after he has left the cinema.
(A Man Escaped)
Country: FR
Technical: bw 101m
Director: Robert Bresson
Cast: François Leterrier, Charles Le Clainche, Maurice Beerblock
Synopsis:
A French resistance fighter painstakingly engineers his escape from Nazi custody in Montluc prison.
Review:
Bresson's minutely detailed, almost affectless, portrait of one man's imprisonment and escape is worth comparing with Becker's Le trou. One is a straightforward crime film, with suspense and individual performances to the fore, the other an ascetic case history of one man's fortitude in isolation (based on a true story). Bresson implies that Fontaine (the real-life Devigny) is closest to God, and receives his grace (the 'vent' of the subtitle). Sparing use of Mozart's Mass in C minor underlines the Catholic subtext, but more subtly also does the quasi-liturgical repetition of gestures and routines. Patience and faith matter as much as daring, for example in the hours spent stuck on the prison roof. The admiration in which the film is held stems from the director's arrival at a new cinematic language, one which admits imperfections such as unsynchronised sound and separates out the elements of production, so that they may coalesce in the mind of the viewer long after he has left the cinema.
(A Man Escaped)
Country: FR
Technical: bw 101m
Director: Robert Bresson
Cast: François Leterrier, Charles Le Clainche, Maurice Beerblock
Synopsis:
A French resistance fighter painstakingly engineers his escape from Nazi custody in Montluc prison.
Review:
Bresson's minutely detailed, almost affectless, portrait of one man's imprisonment and escape is worth comparing with Becker's Le trou. One is a straightforward crime film, with suspense and individual performances to the fore, the other an ascetic case history of one man's fortitude in isolation (based on a true story). Bresson implies that Fontaine (the real-life Devigny) is closest to God, and receives his grace (the 'vent' of the subtitle). Sparing use of Mozart's Mass in C minor underlines the Catholic subtext, but more subtly also does the quasi-liturgical repetition of gestures and routines. Patience and faith matter as much as daring, for example in the hours spent stuck on the prison roof. The admiration in which the film is held stems from the director's arrival at a new cinematic language, one which admits imperfections such as unsynchronised sound and separates out the elements of production, so that they may coalesce in the mind of the viewer long after he has left the cinema.