The Man Who Sleeps

Name: The Man Who Sleeps
Genre: Drama
Released: 1974-04-24
Duration: 77 min
Rating: 4.5
Cast: Ludmila Mikaël, Jacques Spiesser

Just to wait until there is nothing left to wait for.

Rating

4.5 (1)

Release Date

4/24/1974

Runtime

77 mins

Genres

Drama

Overview

A young student decides to have no more interaction with the world than is needed to minimally sustain life. His increasingly automaton-like behavior is coupled with a strange clarity of insight about the world around him.

Status

Released

Original Language

French

Budget

Revenue

Homepage

How It Feels

Read from this film's synopsis, keywords and credits, and used to work out what it sits beside.

A hypnotic descent into voluntary disconnection, where a student methodically strips away his engagement with the world until only a hollow shell remains. It's a film that finds dark clarity in numbness, observing with clinical precision what happens when someone chooses to stop living.

Mood

MelancholicContemplativeBleak

Themes

IsolationIdentityMortalityComing apart

Tone

Matter-of-fact

Pacing

Meditative

Look

NaturalisticDocumentary-like

Structure

Linear

Heads up

Suicide and self-harm

Jacques Spiesser

Man

Ludmila Mikaël

Narrator

Reviews

nicolascagegoons

Aug 27, 2026

Amazing, a film about loneliness and self isolation from the rest of the world. You don't feel like anything, you don't feel like you matter at all.
The film is only 77 minutes long and while for the first hour it seemingly thrives with its pacing, the last 17 minutes feel like a chore to watch.