Mizoguchi employs his trademark graceful and meditative camera style, especially gliding long takes, in checking against ambition, greed, and the iniquity of patriarchal society. A towering masterpiece with quiet intensity and emotional subtlety.
An anti-dramatic, ascetic, monotone, minimalistic masterpiece of terseness and precision, bare of superfluous embellishment, devoid of any emotion or usual tropes, A Man Escaped easily remains the best of all prison escape movies and a pinnacle in French cinema.