A Man Escaped

viewed January 9, 1999 on video

For full information about this film, click here

Poker-face cinema: a film that makes no big show about its story but is engrossing from beginning to end due to cinematic economy and impeccable pacing.  This movie should be requisite for Movie Storytelling 101: every scene has a purpose and does its business without fanfare.   Everything is dealt with matter of factly: none of the inmates of the Nazi prison camp are expressive, though you can tell that on the inside their souls hunger for freedom.  We know this through the dual personality of the protagonist Fontaine as he plans to escape.  When alone in his cell, his poker face gives way to fervent actions driven by his machinations to break out of an impending execution.  

Fontaine's voice-over is as detached as that of a historian, but counterpoised with camerawork that is charged with life, following every move of Fontaine's hands as he scrapes and chisels his way out of his cell.  The effect of dissolving into black before entering another scene is sublime - it suggests that the whole procedure towards escape is plotted out into neat little episodes, which is probably not true to the actual experience of languishing in prison for months, but gives the movie as a whole a unique forward momentum.

Fontaine's escape attempt is so straightforward that it is almost anticlimactic -- it doesn't pile on the tension as would a Hollywood action flick.  Fontaine goes through the steps stoically; his first step is deciding whether or not to kill his new inmate or escape together.  It may take a while to realize that at one moment during the escape he has spent over an hour crouched in a corner, uncertain whether it is safe to move on.  This juxtaposition of real vs. movie time creates a refreshing rhythm that brings to attention the heaviness of the choices involved in the escape, rather than just following the action.  Finally, his final disappearance into the mist is the beautiful equivalent of a sigh -- as nonchalant as he was throughout the movie, he just evaporates into the air...

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