A Man Escaped (1956) Robert Bresson. The original full title was (Un condamné à mort s’est échappé: Le vent souffle où il veut - A man condemned to death is escaped: The wind blows where it will.) A suspenseful, enthralling recounting from the memoirs of a fighter in the French Resistance.
Fantastic!
Good triple-bill with Le Trou and Army of Shadows, but not for the faint of heart!
Coincidentally, I bought a DVD of this only this weekend, and was planning to watch it in a few days’ time as a double bill with “Pickpocket”. It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen either film, but both, from what I remember, had absolutely unforgettable endings. Quite apart from anything else, Bresson really knew how to end a film!
Were we discussing L’argent, which ends with the quote from Crime and Punishment?
Yes, I getthe impression that Bresson was particularly fascinated with the Russian writers. “Pickpocket” is also, in soem ways, a re-working of various themes in “Crime and Punishment”, while “L’Argent”, as well as its Dostoyevskian references, seems to take as its starting point the novella “The Forged Coupon” by Tolstoy.
Will check it out, L. I see the dark mood continues….
Bresson could make a masterful scene out of a man trying to unscrew a hinge.
Very unfortunate that a lot of his stuff is going out of print.
I find his spare style refreshing, bracing. It makes films today seem bloated, almost revolting. He had a special genius.
Occasionally, I must admit, the spareness of style is a bit too much for me, and the film goes over my head. I felt this particularly with “Au Hasard, Balthasar”. Another difficulty is the religiosu content of his films: I am not myself religious, but usually, it doesn’t take that great a leap of the imagination to be able to identify with religious works. But Bresson’s brand of religious belief – Jansenism – I often find rather alien to my sensibilities. However, Bresson has made so much of so obviously high a quality, that I am generally happy to go where he takes me, even if he takes me into strange and unfamiliar territory.
A Jansenist! I didn’t know that – like Pascal!!
I’ve been watching so many movies, I can’t recall if I saw Pickpocket – maybe I read the Tolstoy story…