Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped is based on the true story of André Devigny, a French officer who was imprisoned by the Germans and the Vichy collaboration government at Montluc jail in 1943. Bresson is a former painter and scriptwriter who was himself a prisoner of war from June 1940 to April 1941. Perhaps for that reason A Man Escaped is quite unlike Escape from Alcatraz or any other film in this familiar genre.