06-18-2019, 05:54 PM
The Hole (1960)
It's a shame that Director Jacques Becker died right after finishing 'The Hole' ('Le Trou') because it's a real masterpiece and I want to see more. The film concerns a real-life escape attempt by five convicts from Paris' La Santé Prison and features one of the actual escapees playing himself (Roland Darbant aka Jean Keraudy). The camera hardly leaves the cell, or the prisoner's sides and mostly stays at their eye-level and perspective, so we feel like a 6th conspirator. There is no music so the viewer can listen intently to the echoes of the prison interior and the sounds of danger, just like the characters. To further the immersion, some sequences play out in real time, most notably when the prisoners/actors take turns to smash trough a concrete floor in one 4-minute shot. The quick thinking ingenuity the men show in using bits of mirror, an ink pot, pieces of their beds and cardboard boxes as makeshift escape tools is incredible. I could watch this again right now.
It's a shame that Director Jacques Becker died right after finishing 'The Hole' ('Le Trou') because it's a real masterpiece and I want to see more. The film concerns a real-life escape attempt by five convicts from Paris' La Santé Prison and features one of the actual escapees playing himself (Roland Darbant aka Jean Keraudy). The camera hardly leaves the cell, or the prisoner's sides and mostly stays at their eye-level and perspective, so we feel like a 6th conspirator. There is no music so the viewer can listen intently to the echoes of the prison interior and the sounds of danger, just like the characters. To further the immersion, some sequences play out in real time, most notably when the prisoners/actors take turns to smash trough a concrete floor in one 4-minute shot. The quick thinking ingenuity the men show in using bits of mirror, an ink pot, pieces of their beds and cardboard boxes as makeshift escape tools is incredible. I could watch this again right now.
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