Four prison inmates have been hatching a plan to literally dig out of jail when another prisoner, Claude Gaspard, is moved into their cell. They take a risk and share their plan with the newcomer. Over the course of three days, the prisoners and friends break through the concrete floor using a bed post and begin to make their way through the sewer system -- yet their escape is anything but assured.
Michel Constantin Jean Keraudy Philippe Leroy Raymond Meunier Marc Michel Jean-Paul Coquelin André Bervil Eddy Rasimi Philippe Dumat Albert Augier Jean Becker Raymond Bour Lucien Camiret Durieu Gérard Hernandez Jean Luisi Jean Minisini Paul Pavel Paul Préboist Marcel Rouzé Catherine Spaak Dominique Zardi
The Night Watch, A Um Passo da Liberdade, De ontvluchting, Hullet, Auk, La evasión, Tunneli, To kelli tis prodosias, Az odú, The Hole, 구멍, Il buco, Das Loch, 洞, Дыра, Delik, Dziura, حفره, Hålet, 穴, Діра, החור
France
Cannes Film Festival
France
Italy
Germany
UK
Spain
Denmark
Finland
Japan
USANR
UK
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Italy
Japan
Spain
UK
USA
-3 times more engrossing than Stalag 17 (1953).
-1.5 times more detailed and elaborate than The Great Escape (1963).
-5 times more suspenseful than Escape from Alcatraz (1979).
-20 times more fascinating than The Shawshank Redemption (1994).
Becker's farewell is a fascinating thrill ride full of emotions and unexpected twists (or at least they would be unexpected if people hadn't seen many similar films before this one). This is an absolute must, and one of the finest in the "prison escape" genre.
98/100
Somewhat uniquely, Le Trou is a prison escape movie that’s more about imprisonment than it is about escape. The film even uses the concept of escape, and the process, as a metaphor for further imprisonment. Ultimately, this is a film about the dehumanising effects of imprisonment, how it robs us of personhood and how it has no rehabilitative or useful function.
Like Bresson’s A Man Escaped, the majority of the film is taken up by sheer process. We mostly watch the steps taken to launch an escape and wider context is primarily ignored. In Bresson’s film, wider context is eschewed as it is a war film - therefore the escape becomes metaphorically linked with the war effort and the human…
One of the most unfortunate things is that this film was released in the same year as Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard’s) because it stole all the attention. But still one of the best films I have ever seen and perhaps a landmark of the end of the French Golden Era and the beginning of the French New Wave, this masterpiece emerges as one of the first and most important of the French New Wave, a celluloid tapestry woven with threads of raw emotion, existential depth and moral ambiguity. Within the austere limits of the walls of a penitentiary, the film unfolds a narrative of deep complexity, diving deep into the recesses of the human soul, naked in the midst of the harsh…
"You see our cell is rather special"
Le Trou is a prison escape film that, in a way, is more about incarceration than it is about escape.
The idea of escape and the procedure itself are also used in the movie as a metaphor for additional punishment. In the end, the finale explores the dehumanising consequences of imprisonment, how it deprives us of our humanity, and how it serves no practical or restorative purpose.
As you are thrust into a French jail cell with five inmates who have chosen to free themselves on their own recognisance, this feels less like a movie and more like a documentary. It’s a mix between Shawsank Redemption and Cool Hand Luke imo.
"It's a pity you're not coming with us"
An unforgettable last line.
There is nothing more cinematic than watching 5 bros digging up a hole 🤝🏼
me: do you mind if i put on some white noise to help me get to sleep?
*puts on le trou*
"You see our cell is rather special"
This feels less like a film, and more like a fly-on-the-wall documentary as you’re dropped into a French prison cell with 5 guests who’ve decided to release themselves on their on recognizance.
There’s no music, no mean guards, and no prison bully. Simply five motivated guys with some ingenuity, and the willingness to do a whole lot of digging. Based on an actual event, director Jacques Becker went so far as to hire three of the original participants as technical consultants, and one of them even stars as himself in the movie.
BONUS POINTS for that wonderful open ended finale which caught me totally off guard.
"It’s a pity you’re not coming with us"
A meticulously crafted, biographical French prison break movie that has a similar meditative power to Bresson's stripped-down focus on process in A Man Escaped—it is even shot by Ghislain Cloquet who would 6 years later shoot Au Hasard Balthazar. There's a sense of purity that comes with watching one of the real-life prisoners of this event painstakingly re-enact his own resourceful escape attempt techniques in long, unbroken takes of hands/tools/labor, and much of this film is dedicated to that hypnotic ritual. But where former prisoner-of-war and old guard of the French film industry by this point Jacques Becker (having been Jean Renoir's assistant since the 1930s, and who sadly died shortly before this came out) diverges from Bresson is in…
