Freedom. Hope. Trust.
To live out of these truths, we don’t speak. We act.
How true that is is dramatized in the world of A Man Escaped – in the impassive concentration of a French POW in the heavy quiet of a German prison in Lyon.
Watched last night, via the Criterion Channel. From their description:
With the simplest of concepts and sparest of techniques, Robert Bresson made one of the most suspenseful jailbreak films of all time in A Man Escaped. Based on the account of an imprisoned French Resistance leader, this unbelievably taut and methodical marvel follows the fictional Fontaine’s single-minded pursuit of freedom, detailing the planning and execution of his escape with gripping precision. But Bresson’s film is not merely about process—it’s also a work of intense spirituality and humanity.
Well, I wouldn’t characterize it as “suspenseful,” exactly – since you know from the beginning that it’s based on a personal account. Which indicates a particular outcome, even made clear in the trailer, which is quite striking on its own.
What is going on behind that wall? What human heart is seeking freedom behind any wall of any kind?
It’s spare, it’s gripping, and it bears subtle spiritual sensibilities.
From a film scholar’s notes:
A Man Escaped is based on the memoirs of Andre Devigny, imprisoned in France during World War II by the Gestapo for his activities with the French Resistance. In an effort to preserve the authenticity of Devigny’s account, Bresson shot A Man Escaped in Fort Montluc prison in Lyons, where Devigny’s imprisonment occurred. Indeed, the prison had actually preserved the ropes and hooks Devigny used in his escape attempt, and Bresson copied these assiduously — they become among the most striking props you will ever see. Though Devigny is called Fontaine in the film, what follows is so close to his experiences that the film deserves its extraordinary foreword by Devigny: “This story is true. I give it as it is, without embellishment.” Bresson had the moral right to claim such authenticity: he, too, had been imprisoned by the Germans during the war.
The way that Bresson recreates war’s physically limited view is through sound; A Man Escaped could even be said to be about sound. Because Fontaine must live in punishing silence, and because the view from his little cell is so limited, he can only construct his cognitive map of the world he cannot see through the sounds, many of them painfully small, which are so infrequently scattered about him. Those sounds begin to expand and mutate inside his head, and inside ours, becoming inordinately important, freighted with mortal danger one moment, blissful hope the next….
….In the end, Fontaine must make the most crucial decision that a man starved for human society can possibly face: can I trust another person? Whether in Fort Montluc or Guantanamo, the experience of solitary confinement in wartime purposefully seeks to tear away the very essence of humanity in the service of defeating the enemy. Call it “morale,” but it is something deeper: the knowledge that we obtain sustenance from one anothers’ presence, and that without that presence, we are uncertain, afraid, and finally, silent.
The naturalism that Bresson evinces in every area, but especially with Leterrier gives the film it’s heart and soul. It’s impossible not to feel empathy with Fontaine’s loneliness and to feel every moment of despair when he loses people who have helped him survive his ordeal. Fontaine reaches out to his fellow humans and decides crucially to trust in those when he needs to rather than descend into the abyss. The tools he has are his head and his hands, a priest says ‘God will save us’, Fontaine replies, ‘Yes, but he could do with some help’. Fontaine’s quest for freedom is an affirmation of reaching out to others, and if he didn’t have a second person helping he admits the escape would have faltered at the second wall. The guards are mostly not shown as complete people, often Bresson frames them from only the chest down, this gives a subtle suggestion that they are outside of the human community that Fontaine lives in, their presence an affront to a man’s basic human rights.
Freedom. Hope. Trust.
Charlotte was Both 