LE TROU Movie Review

The Hole
The Night Watch
II Buco

Based on the true story of five prisoners who attempted a seemingly impossible escape from a notorious French prison in 1947, French director Jacques Becker's Le Trou (The Hole) has never received theatrical distribution in the United States. The distributors who turned it down should be sent to the slammer themselves, because Le Trou is one of the great prison films—nearly on a level with Bresson's A Condemned Mart Has Escaped—and a textbook example of how to generate true suspense on screen. There have been a lot of movies about digging tunnels out of prisons, but after experiencing Le Trou and feeling the steady, rhythmic clanging of tools pounding at cement hour after hour, day after day, this claustrophobic, uncompromising stunner is the one you'll remember. Without wanting to reveal the ending, it's safe to tell you that one of the five men whose true story is told in the film—Jose Giovanni—was still very much alive as of this writing and was the author of the autobiographical novel on which Becker based this film. In a rather amazing example of art becoming indistinguishable from life, Giovanni not only collaborated on the screenplay of Le Trou, but also went on to write scripts for other French filmmakers before trying his own hand at directing.

NEXT STOP … A Condemned Man Has Escaped, Grand Illusion, Casque d'Or

1959 118m/B Phillippe LeRoy, Marc Michel, Catherine Spaak, Andre Bervil, Michel Constantin, Jean-Paul Coquelin, Jean Keraudy, Raymond Meunier, Eddy Rasimi, Dominique Zardi; D: Jacques Becker; W: Jacques Becker, Jose Giovanni, Jean Aurel; C: Ghislan Cloquet. NYR