A Man Escaped

The film's technical adviser was the man whose story it is. André Devigny was a French lieutenant who escaped from Montluc prison in German-occupied Lyon in 1943; after the war de Gaulle awarded him the Cross of the Liberation. Devigny published an account of the escape in 1954, Bresson built the screenplay from it, and brought Devigny onto the set as adviser. Almost all of it takes place in one cell, and its subject is not the escape but the preparation for it. Sharpening the end of a spoon, separating the boards of a door, turning bedsheets into rope. Bresson shows these patiently and repeatedly; the tension comes not from event but from the speed of a hand at work. The only music is Mozart's Mass in C minor, and it enters only a few times; the Kyrie heard at the end, as Fontaine and Jost walk off into the dark, repays that restraint. Bresson won Best Director at Cannes in 1957 for it. Who it is for: viewers who like process on film, the detail of work done by hand, and faith shown without being discussed. Who it is not for: anyone expecting action. Almost nothing here is fast, and the characters' pasts are never opened.