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Un condamné à mort s'est échappé (A Man Escaped) 4 June 04

Section: article

Categories: Film / in-a-cinema

Most of this remarkable film by Robert Bresson takes place in the prison cell of its protagonist, Fontaine, a young French resistance fighter in occupied France in 1943 who was captured by the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei) and eventually condemned to death. (Hence the full French title, more expressive than the English but I suppose too awkward: A Man Condemned to Death has Escaped.)

This film is narrated almost entirely from beginning to end as Fontaine’s recollection. Under the desperate circumstances of the story, the existence of the narration itself becomes a source of hope and inspiration because an experience remembered is an experience survived.

Much of the visual space of the film is limited to the small cell. The narration delineates space, more than we can see, as part of planning the escape in the physical environment of the Gestapo prison in Lyon: describing the wood panels on the door to the cell and what quality of wood they are made of and how they are held together and therefore how they can be opened; determining the architecture of the prison, its walls and their overhangs, trying to find a way out in mind and practice. And to the degree that the narration depicts the make-up, the three-dimensional space, of other characters, it does so in describing their actions in helping him and thereby implying a political consciousness and a history of resistance, or by describing the circumstances of how, for example, other prisoners ended up there: such as Orsini, whose wife had turned him in to the occupiers, and who is understandably demoralized but rises to heroism through his relationship to Fontaine. The latter’s influence is like that of a strong magnet aligning and bringing coherence to the “confused” molecular structure of other fatigued, non-magnetic iron it comes into contact with.

The narration flows on and on and becomes the story of the film, it grows into its consciousness, its conscience, conviction and liberating spirit—developing into all of that as it drives the film forward, and drives the physical actions shown in the visual.

This relationship between words (thoughts?) and actions—in the sense of the mind manifesting itself in material, resonating in the world, testing itself in reality—is echoed and reinforced by the numerous instructions that are shared among prisoners, representing their accumulated experience on how to do certain things. The protagonist’s thoughts are the instructions for liberation, from the cell, the prison, from the overwhelming odds and the pull towards capitulation, both spiritual and political. Even the instructions he received for communicating with the outside world, for which the narration itself ultimately becomes an example.

Though the film is based on actual recollections of a real person, I experienced the narration as more than a memoir of the escape: I can imagine the words of the narration being the protagonist Fontaine’s thoughts to himself while he was planning and carrying out his actions—thinking in the past tense, projecting himself into the future as a survivor while doing things; for example, while he was sharpening the spoon handle he could have been thinking the actual words of narration: “I carefully sharpened the spoon on the stone floor.”

The film is a set of instructions for liberation.

The flow of French is often interrupted by German: either brusk commands to the prisoners, or banal small talk in the background. For my sensibility, the German language is treated respectfully by Bresson, it is not presented in stereotype, coarsely, as it so often is. But it does shock with its commands and banality: the terror of this oppressive authority and the terror of people’s daily lives in carrying out their “duty.” Bresson himself had spent 16 months in a German prison during the war—his experience comes through in this and so many ways.

Further, the way Fontaine deals with a rather confused young prisoner sent into his cell with him, possibly as a spy, and wearing a uniform which is half French and half German, is beautiful and adds yet another dimension to such a full film.

I discovered that this film has been released this year on DVD by New Yorker Films.

Title: Un condamné à mort s’est échappé (A Man Escaped)

Subtitle: ou Le vent souffle où il veut (The Wind Blows Where It Wants)

Directed by: Robert Bresson

Written by: Robert Bresson

Based on the memoir of: André Devigny

Starring: François Leterrier (as Lieutenant Fontaine), Charles Le Clainche, Maurice Beerblock, Roland Monod, Jaches Ertaud (as Orsini), and more

Languages: French and German (with German subtitles for the French)

Year: 1956

Cinema: Filmmuseum Frankfurt

  • Title: Un condamné à mort s'est échappé (A Man Escaped)