Un condamné à mort s’est échappé
With UN CONDAMNÉ À MORT S’EST ÉCHAPPÉ , Robert Bresson creates one of the most radical and affecting prison escape films ever made—based on a true story.
Lyon, 1943. Lieutenant Fontaine is imprisoned in Montluc and awaits execution by the Nazis. In the silence of his cell, he begins, step by step, to prepare his escape. Every detail matters. Every sound becomes meaningful. But when an unknown cellmate enters his space, trust becomes a matter of life and death.
Bresson—himself a former prisoner of war—turns this story into a cinematic meditation on freedom, willpower, and inner discipline. He rejects spectacle in favor of radical austerity: no explicit violence, no melodrama, no psychological overstatement. What remains is pure cinema as “écriture”: a precise, stripped-down form in which every image and every sound is essential.
Sound plays a crucial role. Footsteps in the corridor, the creaking of wood, the scraping of metal—what is not shown is made audible. As Bresson put it: “When only the eye is addressed, the ear grows impatient.” The tension arises not from what we see, but from what we anticipate, fear, and gradually come to understand.”
Although the outcome is known—the escape will succeed—the film’s true power lies not in suspense, but in the inner journey of a man who refuses to submit. His perseverance, ingenuity, and quiet faith (for some, almost a form of grace) turn this escape into not a tale of heroism, but an existential act.
DE GENOMEN BENEN IN DE NOR
FC Dollyshot and De Cinema join forces once again, this time for an open-air screening series this summer at De Nor (Middelheimlaan 59, 2020 Antwerpen)—the free-spirited space run by visual artist Dennis Tyfus in Middelheim Park. DE GENOMEN BENEN (THE GREAT ESCAPE) brings together three films from the 1950s and 60s that approach imprisonment as a system, a mental condition, and a struggle for escape.
In THE TRIAL (17/06), Orson Welles shows a world without logic: a trial without charges, a system that keeps on spinning. Jacques Becker’s LE TROU (15/07) follows five men and one plan—no heroics, just precision. In UN CONDAMNÉ À MORT S’EST ÉCHAPPÉ Robert Bresson reduces escape to pure discipline.
A triptych on resistance—from system to body, from collective to individual. One Wednesday evening per month: as the sun sets, the projector flickers to life.
