079 - A Man Escaped, 1956, France. Dir. Robert Bresson.

Monday, March 20, 2017

079 - A Man Escaped, 1956, France. Dir. Robert Bresson.

Fontaine is riding in the back of a car.  He thinks about opening the door.  He waits.  The car stops.  He leaps out.

The camera stays inside the car.  On the other man.  Handcuffed.

A noise.

Fontaine is shoved back into the car.  Handcuffed.

He will not escape the car again.

Fontaine is in prison.  A German prison.  A prison camp.

He is French.  France is occupied by the Germans.  By Nazis.

The rumor is that he tried to blow up something.  That he is a member of the French Resistance.  And he was caught.

Fontaine's first cell is on the ground floor.  He has an open window to the courtyard.  Three man walk back and forth in the courtyard.  One is named Terry.  Terry speaks to him one short sentence at a time on each lap of his walk.

They cannot be seen talking.

Fontaine lowers a bandana, tied up like a sack, by a rope.  Terry puts things in it.  Hands him things.

Fontaine lowers a letter to his loved ones.  Terry sends up a safety pin.

Terry sneaks out the letter to his daughter when his daughter comes to visit.  We are told.  By Fontaine.  In voice-over.

Fontaine taps on the cell walls.  Communicates with his neighbor.  His neighbor gives him instructions on how to remove his handcuffs.  He removes his handcuffs.  He uses the safety pin.

The men have slop buckets.  They line up single-file.  They walk down the hallways carrying their slop buckets.  Down the stairs.  Into the courtyard.  To a hole in the ground.  Where they empty their slop buckets.

They enter a room where they wash.

In here they talk to each other.  In whispered tones.  They pass notes folded tightly from fingers to palms.  They hide them in their pockets.

Fontaine learns of a cellmate.  Orsini.  Orsini has been hurt by his wife back home.  She turned him in.  Betrayed him.

Orsini is the bravest man alive.

Because he forgives.

And forgets.

Orsini will try to escape.  He will make it to the second wall.  His rope will break on the second wall.  He will be caught.

He will be shot.

Fontaine learns of this.  He is now in his second cell.  107.  On the top floor.  His neighbor informs him.  Orsini was caught.  Orsini was shot.  Orsini died so that you might escape.  By using the knowledge of Orsini's attempt.  And improving upon it.

Fontaine meets a pastor in the prison.

The pastor hands him a slip of paper.  Read and pray.  God will save you.  Fontaine responds: He'll save us if we give him the chance.  Fontaine is a man of action.

Another man says, Fontaine, you are the only one thinking about escape.  Thinking about it because it is impossible.

The pastor tells him the story of Nicodemus.  You must be born again.  How can a man be born again?  How can he enter again into his mother's womb?

So that he can escape again?

The door is made of wood.  Wooden slats.  Held together by a different wood.  Two different species of tree.  Two different types of wood.  This renders the door vulnerable.  Vulnerable to a metal spoon.

A metal spoon.

If you have seen Escape from Alcatraz (1979, Dir. Don Siegel), then you know about the metal spoon.  Clint Eastwood.  Metal spoon.  Fontaine.  Metal spoon.

Escape from Alcatraz.  A Man Escaped.

When you put the spoiler in the title, it is not about what happens but how.

How it happens.

Details.  Strategy.  Logistics.

The film is fascinating in its specifics.

Problems met with problem-solving.

It is our second French film this year about an attempted escape from a German prison camp.

Our first was Grand Illusion (1937) (061, March 2).

Grand Illusion deals with grand themes about what it means to be human.

A Man Escaped deals with engineering.

And maybe with what Hemingway would call grace under pressure.

This story is right up Hemingway's alley.

Or his deep-sea fishing boat.

When you have a title like A Man Escaped, it is technically possible that it might not be a spoiler but a statement of irony.

In this case the irony in the title is not in the escape but in the singleness of the man.

He has spent the entire film working alone.

They give him a cellmate in the final moment.

Today is the day of his execution.

One thing now is certain.

Either he will escape or he will die.