Synopsis
A Man Escaped (1956) is Robert Bresson's prison-break drama, free to watch online on iFILM. In Nazi-occupied Lyon, captured Resistance lieutenant Fontaine is locked inside the Montluc fortress and starts plotting his way out from the first hour.
There are no chases here, no swelling score, no last-minute rescues. Fontaine sharpens a spoon against the floor, unpicks his blanket into rope, bends a lamp frame into a hook, and listens. Bresson strips the film down to hands, footsteps, the rattle of keys, the cough in the next cell. Then a teenage prisoner is moved in beside him, and Fontaine has to gamble: ally, or a planted informer for the Gestapo?
The story comes from the memoirs of André Devigny, who really did break out of Montluc. Bresson, himself held in a German POW camp for over a year, shot in the actual prison and cast non-professionals, among them François Leterrier in the lead. It took the directing prize at Cannes in 1957. If you think suspense needs spectacle, this patient, almost wordless thriller will change your mind. Stream A Man Escaped (1956) online on iFILM.
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