Bresson himself was a prisoner of the Germans in WWII. "Once I heard someone being whipped through the door, and then I heard the body fall. That was ten times worse than if I had seen the whipping. When you see Fontaine with his bloody face being brought back to the cell, you are forced to imagine the awfulness of the beating - which makes it very powerful."
Like The Wrong Man, everything in this film is based on fact, the memoir of André Devigny. With massive attention to detail, a condemned prisoner, convincingly played in the downbeat Bresson style by François Leterrier, is determined to escape, and gives the other prisoners hope. Wonderful attention to sound too, good intermittent use of Mozart, Bresson's beautiful ellipses.
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| Bresson directing Charles Le Clainche and Leterrier |
Cinematography - Léonce-Henri Burel (also The Trial of Joan of Arc and Pickpocket). Editing - Raymond Lamy.
Leterrier was quite a guy. His first escape was three days before he was due to be executed in 1943, then he was captured again and escaped again. Before the end of the war he was captured again, in Spain, but escaped again! He ended up a senior figure in French Intelligence, died in 1999 aged 82. (Source: Independent Obituary.) (He then escaped again.)
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