Le Trou
1960 · Directed by Jacques Becker
Original language: French
- drama
- thriller
- crime
The story
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.
What it’s like
Austere black-and-white images of a Paris prison cell, shot with flat, even light and long unbroken takes that let the viewer watch hands work at concrete for minutes at a time. The sound is nearly everything: the scrape of a metal spoon, a toothbrush rasping on stone, dripping water in a tunnel, and the muffled clatter of footsteps in the corridor, with almost no score to tell you how to feel. The mood is spare and taut, a cool, grey, neo-noir stillness where tension builds from patience and procedure rather than action. Its people are men who trust each other only slowly, and the arc is one of uneasy fellowship forming under pressure. Violence is rare and brief; the danger is in discovery and in the mud, and there is no gore or sexual content. Quiet, methodical and unsentimental, it suits a late night alone or a patient, focused watch, and it is for people who enjoy heist-style suspense driven by craft and silence.
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