BAMcinématek Presents: A Man Escaped (Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut)

Part of the BAMcinématek series Bresson

Fri, Arp 13, 2012 at 2, 4:30, 6:50, 9:15pm

Directed by Robert Bresson
With François Leterrier

(1956) 99min, 35mm

In the closest thing in Bresson’s oeuvre to an action movie. French POW Fontaine (Leterrier) methodically plots his escape from a German prison camp, wielding a spoon as a pen knife and bed sheets for rope. But the 11th-hour appearance of a new cellmate, a sniveling youth of questionable allegiance, forces him to think quick: should he kill the potential snitch or bring him along? Drawing on his own experiences as a prisoner of war, Bresson wrings suspense from meticulous sound design—the scraping of the spoon against the cell door, the plodding footsteps of a night watchman—and caps it off with his most exultant conclusion.