Silence in Bresson’s Un Condemné à mort s'est échapé

Bresson’s A Man Escaped (Un Condemné à mort s'est échapé) seems, on my first viewing over a month ago at NYC’s Film Forum, to be one of those quiet films whose magnitude builds so slowly that you’re hardly aware until you bear the weight of the escape at the end. I’m drawn to the minimalism of this film—visually, performatively, sonically, textually. Without trying to stretch the drama of his main character’s escape, Bresson instead creates a story out of the many obstacles to be steadily and quietly surpassed. I would like to focus on the sound.

One intriguing aspect of Bresson’s film is the role of silence. Bresson was a minimalist. He wanted each sonic aspect of this film to be the absolute minimum necessary, which apparently meant only sounds that would help move the narrative core of the film along. There is one point in the film when the two prisoners (Fontaine and François, played by François Letterier and Charles La Clainche) are escaping and they are on the roof of the inner cell wall—they hear a squeaky sound. Fontaine says that it’s the only sound whose source he can’t figure out. Later, when they reach the roof of the outer cell wall, Fontaine and François encounter the source of the sound: a Nazi on a bike with ungreased chains circling the perimeter.


Sound in A Man Escaped is invasive: it’s a clue to the danger ahead, it threatens to give one away, it misleads, it informs. Sound plays a crucial role in every frame of the film. Consider, for example, the relationships between prison cells. In order for Fontaine to communicate to other cells, he relies on a distinct patterned sequence of knocks. Though he can’t see the expressions of his prison mates, he has to trust them. And in order to trust them, he must trust that they’ll remain silent—that they won’t give him away to prison authorities. Silence is a form of faith—in someone’s concealment of a secret.

A minimalist style might also contain a secret. Why does Bresson pare things down so much? Why are his “model” actors trained to merely say their lines (minimizing inflection or expressive emotional interpretation)? What we get is something like two serene lakes of sound and image. The scenes between Fontaine and François, at the end of the film, when François moves into the cell, seem to portray many interpretive possibilites. There is only the image and what is heard and said. François’ face and the soundtrack conceal full trust. We’re not entirely sure that François won’t rat on Fontaine, even after he’s joined him in his pact.

Not a word of affection is really uttered between the two characters, but the film’s gravity is held—in the end—by their attraction. It is unusual for a character who enters in the last third of a film to have so much weight. François can only be the silent thing that goes wrong or the key.

The voiceover throughout is of Fontaine plotting his escape, at any cost, even killing François. It is remorseless, quiet—you could even say almost “godlike”. But the voiceover (unlike most movies) isn’t just a simple narrational tool—it’s function is to allow us to follow Fontaine’s meticulous thought process. Subdued, logical strategies from the “inside” contend with the problems presented on the “outside”.

Interstingly, When asked about the film's sense of mysticism, Bresson has elaborated: "I do not believe that everything in a film is put there. You include some things without including them. What you call my 'mysticism' must derive from this. In Un Condamné I tried to make the audience feel these extraordinary currents which existed in the German prisons during the Resistance, the presence of something or someone unseen; a hand that directs all."