The Great Movies IV by Roger Ebert

Author:Roger Ebert [Ebert, Roger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780226403984
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2016-08-02T16:00:00+00:00

A Man Escaped

Robert Bresson’s films are often about people confronting certain despair. His subject is how they try to prevail in the face of unbearable circumstances. His plots are not about whether they succeed, but how they endure. He tells these stories in an unadorned style, without movie stars, special effects, contrived thrills, and elevated tension. His films, seemingly devoid of audience-pleasing elements, hold many people in a hypnotic grip. There are no “entertainment values” to distract us, only the actual events of the stories themselves. They demonstrate how many films contain only diversions for the eyes and mind, and use only the superficial qualities of their characters.

Consider A Man Escaped (1956). Here is a movie about a man condemned to death in 1943 in Montluc, a Nazi prison camp in Lyon, inside German-occupied France. In a shot that comes even before the titles, we learn that 7,000 men were killed there during the war. Then we meet the captured Resistance fighter Fontaine (François Leterrier), who has every reason to believe he will be one of them. The character is based on a postwar memoir by André Devigny, who escaped from Montluc on the very day he was scheduled to die.

If you saw this man sit on his bunk and stare at the wall, or hold his head in his hands, you would not blame him. What are his options? His cell is small, the walls and door are thick, the prison walls are high, the Nazi guards are outside. He is in solitary confinement most of the day, although sometimes he can tap out messages in a code, or secretly exchange notes during washing-up time. During the period of his confinement another man he has “met” this way is shot trying to escape.

Fontaine’s method is to use Bresson’s own method: the close scrutiny of salient details. In his films there are no “beauty shots.” No effects. No emphasis on the physical appearances of the actors. No fancy zooms or other shots that call attention. He uses the basic vocabulary of long, medium, close, and insert shots to tell what needs to be told about every scene. No shock cutaways. Reality-based, calm editing.

In this way, we watch Fontaine examine his cell. We know it as well as he does. We see how he stands on a shelf to look out a high, barred window. We see how the food plates enter and leave, and how the guards can see him through a peephole. We see the routine as prisoners are marched to morning wash-up.

What we don’t see much of are the Nazi guards. Their figures appear in some shots, of course, but no point is made of them. None becomes a notable character. None has a name. Dialogue is disembodied. There are none of the usual clichés about the sadistic guard or the friendly guard. Even few of the other prisoners become very familiar to us; Fontaine sees them in passing. Although men are killed in the prison, it doesn’t happen onscreen.

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