A Man Escaped is the absolute best defense of cinematic minimalism *because it has an inherently interesting subject.* It's a story that works completely without adornment, because the nuts and bolts of a prison break are fascinating. I loved it, went to check out more Bresson...and yeah, none of it is riveting like this. But I'll always have this one
With regard to those hard-to-see late-period Bressons, I found three of them (A Gentle Woman, Four Nights of a Dreamer, and Lancelot du Lac) on rarefilmm. At this point, the only one of his features I have yet to lay eyes on is 1977’s The Devil, Probably, which I’ll probably have to make a deal with the Devil to get to see.
A Man Escaped was the first Bresson I watched - shown in my first college film class decades ago. It’s been a favorite since then, and I was pleased to see it still on the Site & Sound list.
Thank you for this series of articles - I’m looking forward to reading your thoughts on the current version of the list. The last few months I’ve being doing some catching up with films on the list I haven’t seen. So far I’ve watched Black Girl, Tropical Malady, Once Upon a Time in the West, and I’m currently in the middle of The Leopard. The Leopard is interesting - before I watched I had it pegged as one of my least favorite kinds of movies, and I didn’t enjoy the first third much. But once Alain Delon’s Tancredi met Angelica, and the Prince’s plan started to unfold, it became a lot more interesting for me.
A Man Escaped is the absolute best defense of cinematic minimalism *because it has an inherently interesting subject.* It's a story that works completely without adornment, because the nuts and bolts of a prison break are fascinating. I loved it, went to check out more Bresson...and yeah, none of it is riveting like this. But I'll always have this one
With regard to those hard-to-see late-period Bressons, I found three of them (A Gentle Woman, Four Nights of a Dreamer, and Lancelot du Lac) on rarefilmm. At this point, the only one of his features I have yet to lay eyes on is 1977’s The Devil, Probably, which I’ll probably have to make a deal with the Devil to get to see.
A Man Escaped was the first Bresson I watched - shown in my first college film class decades ago. It’s been a favorite since then, and I was pleased to see it still on the Site & Sound list.
Thank you for this series of articles - I’m looking forward to reading your thoughts on the current version of the list. The last few months I’ve being doing some catching up with films on the list I haven’t seen. So far I’ve watched Black Girl, Tropical Malady, Once Upon a Time in the West, and I’m currently in the middle of The Leopard. The Leopard is interesting - before I watched I had it pegged as one of my least favorite kinds of movies, and I didn’t enjoy the first third much. But once Alain Delon’s Tancredi met Angelica, and the Prince’s plan started to unfold, it became a lot more interesting for me.