A Man Escaped
by Robert Bresson
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Charles Le Clainche, François Leterrier, Jacques Ertaud, Maurice Beerblock, Roland MonodDirector: Robert Bresson
Cinematographer: Léonce-Henri Burel
Writer: Robert Bresson
Editor: Raymond Lamy
Producer: Alain Poiré
Producer: Jean Thuillier
Writer: André Devigny
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: French (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 99 minutes
Published: 2004-05-01
DVD Release Date: 2004-05-25
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: New Yorker Video
Movie Reviews of A Man Escaped
Movie 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.
Summary 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 Axmaker"Similar DVD Movies
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