A Man Escaped
by Robert Bresson
(Click here)
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD details
Actor: Charles Le Clainche, Fran?ois Leterrier, Jacques Ertaud, Maurice Beerblock, Roland MonodDirector: Robert Bresson
Cinematographer: L?once-Henri Burel
Writer: Robert Bresson
Editor: Raymond Lamy
Producer: Alain Poir?
Producer: Jean Thuillier
Writer: Andr? Devigny
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 99 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-05-25
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: New Yorker Video
DVD Reviews of A Man Escaped
DVD Review: Perfect prison escape movie
Summary: 5 Stars
The Bottom Line:
The film that really showcases how effective Bresson's minimalist style can be (unlike Pickpocket, but that's another story), A Man Escaped details the spectacular escape Andre Divigny made from Fort Montluc during World War II, never showing too much or too little of the story; if you like prison movies or want to get into Robert Bresson, try to find A Man Escaped.
3.5/4
DVD Review: Well worth watching
Summary: 5 Stars
This 1956 film demonstrates that a small budget doesn't mean a bad film. It clearly deserved to win the twin awards: "Best Director, Cannes Film Festival," and "Best Film of the Year" from the French Film Academy.
The film describes what it was like to be a political prisoner of the Germans in Paris during WWII. In their efforts to keep down resistance, both the guilty and innocent were arrested, convicted and executed. This is the story of one of those prisoners and his meticulous efforts to find a way to escape, supported and encouraged by his fellow prisoners.
My only complaint is that the horrors of this time were muted by the director. Beatings and executions take place off camera and Germans appear only fleetingly. Perhaps that was because in 1956 the terrors of the Nazi occupation was too recent to dwell on.
Michael W. Perry, editor of Dachau Liberated : The Official Report
DVD Review: A bitty bit of good news
Summary: 5 Stars
Don't waste $70 + on this DVD, Criterion has announced that they will be releasing this Bresson masterpiece.DVD Review: Redundant but well worth seeing
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm a great admirer of Bresson's films. I appreciate his simplicity, and his refusal to churn out "professional" films that have little substance or artistic merit. His "Diary of a Country Priest" is one of the best films of the twentieth century.
But it seems to me that his "A Man Escaped" is flawed. The film is a pretty straightforward cinematic parallel to a memoir published after WWII of the imprisonment and escape of a French resistance fighter. In putting the story on film, Bresson uses a voice-over that reads portions of the text while showing scenes in which the actors perform what's being read. The upshot is that the effect is slightly pedantic--not enough to make the movie a bust, but just enough to be noticeable, thereby rupturing the film's flow. The viewer doesn't need to hear the main character tell you that he's filing down his dinner spoon so that he can make a chisel out of it while he's filing down his dinner spoon to make a chisel out of it. There's a strange redundancy here for a director well-known for his minimalist approach.
On the other hand, the cinematography in this, as in most of Bresson's films, is excellent. It's also the case that the actors, all of whom were nonprofessional, are quite good. So "A Man Escaped" deserves three and a half--and maybe a full four--stars.
DVD Review: A great film...a poor DVD.
Summary: 5 Stars
I first saw "A Man Escaped" in my Introduction to Cinema Studies course during my freshman year at college. It immediately became one of the greatest films I had ever seen. Over time, my feeling on it has evolved to the point that it is now one of my favorite films as well. The story is told in a sparse, visually narrow style that forces the viewer to imagine as well as simply watch. The prison is never seen as a whole; we are only shown pieces of it--a wall, a doorway, and so on. The German prison guards are more often only heard as footsteps coming to Fontaine's cell door. Rarely do we venture outside of Fontaine's cell once he is imprisoned, and when we do, it is usually to the same place, where he washes himself with the other prisoners. With the exception of the end, the plot of the movie revolves entirely around Fontaine's plan and exeuction of an escape. The magic of the film is that Bresson makes these minutiae indescribably watchable; we are invested in Fontaine's every action through the whole of the film, and we watch with anticipation as he grows closer to his goal with each passing month, day, minute. "A Man Escaped" is a beautifully rendered work of cinema, and it will appeal to everyone who wishes to do more than while away the time seeing a simple 'movie'.
As to the New Yorker DVD listed here, I'm afraid it is severly lacking in quality. The print used is dirty and dark, and the transfer itself suffers from a poor PAL to NTSC conversion that results in 'combing' and 'ghosting' (For those not technically inclined, this basically means that the film runs faster than an American film, but the difference in speed was not properly accounted for, causing a sort of blurriness in some scenes). There are also no special features, save for a few trailers for other Bresson films. As of the date of this review, the New Yorker disc is $26.99, and in my opinion that is simply too much to pay for a DVD that is this mediocre.
My suggestion is this:
A company in the UK called Artificial Eye has just released a new DVD of "A Man Escaped" this April. The picture quality is greatly improved and, because the UK uses the same PAL encoding system, there was no need for a conversion, which eliminates the combing and interlacing problems found on the New Yorker disc. Besides that, there is also a wonderful Dutch documentary (with English subtitles) called "The Road to Bresson" which is almost an hour long and features interviews with Andrei Tarkovsky, Louis Malle, and Paul Schrader amongst others. There is also footage of the notoriously camera-shy director accepting his award for Best Director (for "L'Argent") at the 1983 Cannes film festival. Finally, the documentary includes a delightful surprise at the end which I will not ruin here. On Amazon.co.uk the AE DVD is priced at ?11.98, which is actually cheaper than the New Yorker with the current conversion rate. The disc is coded for Region 2 in the UK, so it will not work on a TV or DVD player in the USA unless both the TV and DVD player have multi-region capability and you have a PAL to NTSC converter box. However, the disc can be viewed on any PC by using any of a series of free media players widely available on the internet that circumvent region coding.
In short, if you value this film as much as I do, and want some value for your money, then skip this disappointment from New Yorker and pick up the Artificial Eye release instead.
Description of A Man Escaped
"This story is true," reads the opening statement of A Man Escaped. "I give it as it is, without embellishment." Based on the memoir by Andre Devigny, a member of the French Resistance imprisoned and sentenced to death by the Gestapo during the German occupation, Bresson (himself at one time a German POW) transforms Devigny's daring escape into an ascetic film of documentary detail. Kept in a tiny stone cell with a high window and a thick wooden door, the prisoner (renamed Fontaine in the film) makes himself intimate with his world--every surface of his room, every sound reverberating through the hall, and every detail of the prison's layout that he can absorb in brief sojourns from his cell. Bresson magnifies every detail with insistent close-ups and detailed examinations of every step of Fontaine's plan, from constructing and hiding ropes and hooks to painstakingly carving out an exit in the heavy cell door, and provides a sort of Greek chorus of fellow prisoners. This is Bresson's first film to feature a completely nonprofessional cast drilled to master precise movements and deliver lines without dramatic inflection. The effect is a drama where the slightest gesture carries the weight of a confession. Bresson's films are not for everybody, and this austere picture hardly carries the visceral punch of The Great Escape, but it's a drama of profound power, with a gripping climax that's as absorbing and tense as any high-energy action film. --Sean AxmakerGeneral DVDs
DVD Video
- Action & Adventure
- African American Cinema
- Animation
- Anime & Manga
- Art House & International
- Classics
- Comedy
- Cult Movies
- Documentary
- Drama
- Educational
- Fitness & Yoga
- Gay & Lesbian
- Horror
- Kids & Family
- Military & War
- Music Video & Concerts
- Musicals & Performing Arts
- Mystery & Suspense
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Special Interests
- Sports
- Television
- Westerns
Bestsellers in General DVDs
Best in ShowWarner Brothers; Release date: 2001-05-15; DVD
Best price: $6.22
Price in other shops:
The Lives of OthersSony; Release date: 2007-08-21; DVD
Best price: $7.49
Price in other shops:
Pan's LabyrinthVERDU,MARIBEL; Release date: 2007-05-15; DVD
Best price: $3.99
Price in other shops:
Chocolat (Miramax Collector's Series)Disney; Release date: 2001-08-07; DVD
Best price: $5.97
Price in other shops:
AmelieDisney; Release date: 2002-07-16; DVD
Best price: $9.98
Price in other shops:
Life Is BeautifulDisney; Release date: 1999-11-09; DVD
Best price: $4.58
Price in other shops:
![Gomorrah (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] Image](/images/Gomorrah-Criterion-Collection-Blu-ray-B002M36R14-X.jpg)
Gomorrah (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]IMAGE ENT.; Release date: 2009-11-24; DVD
Best price: $23.48
Price in other shops:
Let The Right One InMAGNOLIA FILMS; Release date: 2009-03-10; DVD
Best price: $7.62
Price in other shops:
The Ultimate GiftUltimate; Release date: 2007-08-21; DVD
Best price: $6.98
Price in other shops:
Slumdog MillionaireTCFHE; Release date: 2009-03-31; DVD
Best price: $5.42
Price in other shops:
Similar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs
Breathless - Criterion CollectionImage Entertainment; Release date: 2007-10-23; DVD
Best price: $26.13
Price in other shops:
Solaris - Criterion CollectionSolaris; Release date: 2002-11-26; DVD
Best price: $24.54
Price in other shops:
John Cassavetes - Five Films (Shadows / Faces / A Woman Under the Influence / The Killing of a Chinese Bookie / Opening Night ) - Criterion CollectionImage Entertainment; Release date: 2004-09-21; DVD
Best price: $79.94
Price in other shops:
![Repulsion [Region 2] Image](/images/Repulsion-Region-2-B0000AISGO-X.jpg)
Repulsion [Region 2]DVD
Zabriskie PointWARNER HOME VIDEO; Release date: 2009-05-26; DVD
Best price: $12.48
Price in other shops:
Lancelot of the LakeRelease date: 2004-05-25; DVD
Best price: $89.95
Au Hasard Balthazar (Criterion Collection)WIAZEMSKY,ANNE; Release date: 2005-06-14; DVD
Best price: $14.99
Price in other shops:
Last Year at MarienbadRelease date: 1999-03-23; DVD
Best price: $55.41
Pickpocket - Criterion CollectionImage Entertainment; Release date: 2005-11-08; DVD
Best price: $24.00
Price in other shops:
Diary of a Country Priest - Criterion CollectionLAYDU,CLAUDE; Release date: 2004-02-03; DVD
Best price: $24.36
Price in other shops: