Production Budget Analysis

The production budget for A Man Escaped (1956) has not been publicly disclosed.

CAST: François Leterrier, Charles Le Clainche, Maurice Beerblock, Roland Monod, Jacques Ertaud, Jean Paul Delhumeau DIRECTOR: Robert Bresson CINEMATOGRAPHY: Léonce-Henri Burel PRODUCTION: Gaumont, Nouvelles Éditions de Films

Box Office Performance

Theatrical box office data is not publicly available for A Man Escaped (1956). This may indicate a limited release, direct-to-streaming, or a release predating modern box office tracking.

Profitability Assessment

Insufficient publicly available data to assess profitability.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

PRODUCTION NOTES

▸ Production

The film is based on the memoirs of André Devigny, a member of the French Resistance and Compagnon de la Libération who escaped from Montluc prison in Lyon in 1943. Bresson had also been held by the Germans during WWII, though as a prisoner of war.

In an interview, Bresson said that, with A Man Escaped, he "wanted to achieve a great purity, a greater asceticism than in Diary of a Country Priest, noting his use of nonprofessional actors. The music that appears several times in the film is the Kyrie from Mozart's Great Mass in C minor, K. 427.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Summary: Nominated for 1 BAFTA Award4 wins & 3 nominations total

CRITICAL RECEPTION

Bresson won Best Director at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. The film was named by the National Board of Review as one of the best foreign films of 1956.

Today, the work is sometimes considered Bresson's masterpiece. It was ranked 69th in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll. Roger Ebert wrote: "Watching a film like A Man Escaped is like a lesson in the cinema. It teaches by demonstration all the sorts of things that are not necessary in a movie. By implication, it suggests most of the things we're accustomed to are superfluous. I can't think of a single unnecessary shot in A Man Escaped."

Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski was influenced by the film and ranked it as one of the top ten films that "affected" him the most. British-American filmmaker Christopher Nolan was influenced by the film (along with Pickpocket) when making Dunkirk (2017).

Benny Safdie of the Safdie Brothers named the film as his favorite of all time. American-British singer Scott Walker also listed the film as one of his all-time favorites.