The western genre is about progress as a historical process: the founding of the American legal order, the emergence of Statehood as the foremost instrument of modernity and its discontents. Film noir, a contemporary genre to the western, stares straight into the eyes of a society which is the direct consequence of that historical process, that is, progress come full circle: corruption, decadence, suspicion, crime, cynicism, hopelessness. 

So is with A Man Escaped (1956). A crafty film, sure, by a crafty filmmaker. Bresson knows his stuff and, thus, knows what he will not do. Roger Ebert aptly, though laudatorily, describes the Bresson style:

Chinatown (1974) says much with little: its formidable plot builds up slowly, unveiling piece by piece the story of a city. Director Roman Polanski realizes this and his style matches the plot and never outpaces it – it seems always a bit behind. From a fake case of adultery to the widespread moral corruption which made Los Angeles possible we follow private eye J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson), as he gazes and thinks, snoops and tricks his way from dried rivers to orange groves.