Based on the true story of a Gestapo prisoner who escaped from prison just hours before his scheduled execution, Robert Bresson’s film is a suspenseful realist drama and a moving metaphorical fable about chance and redemption. Perhaps most remarkably, Bresson (himself a former prisoner of war) conveys how the significance of everything is transformed by incarceration; sounds offer information, and objects become potential tools for escape.
“Bresson’s purest distillation of the art of realism through simple storytelling, memorably making use of non-professional actors.” Clyde Jeavons
“A sublime example of economic filmmaking.” Kim Haerim
“The film that got me hooked on cinema decades ago, and still the most perfect achievement of my favourite director.” Robert Beeson
“Reason and perception, condemnation and salvation, sin and sanctity, ethics and aesthetics compose the mathematical system of interrogation and revelation that Bresson eventually develops in all his works, but particularly here.” Eduardo Stupía
