Le Trou

After a lukewarm reception on its initial release, Jacques Becker’s Le Trou has since garnered a considerable reputation and it now sits comfortably in the higher echelons with other works deemed ‘classic’. Endorsements from the likes of François Truffaut (“Becker’s best film”) and Jean-Pierre Melville (“the most beautiful French film”) do no harm to the film’s case and indicate the two captivating hours of cinema that await the spectator. Claude Gaspard, charged with the attempted murder of his wife, is put in a cell in Paris’ Santé prison with four hardened criminals. Hostile at first, they soon accept him into their gang, led by Roland Darban, and reveal their elaborate plan for escape; digging a hole in their cell towards a drainage pipe in the prison basement. Each night they work tirelessly under the perilous risk of being caught. Three years after Robert Bresson’s iconic A Man Escaped, one can find many parallels between the two films: the naturalistic approach, the use of non-professional actors, and the close attention to detail of the escape effort – notably the film is based on the original author’s (José Giovanni) own experience of an attempted break-out from the very same prison with his former cellmate Jean Keraudy playing Roland. However, unlike Bresson (or the later Shawshank Redemption), Becker’s film does not portray its prisoners in a soft light. They are hard-core, grimy folk, in jail for just cause, however, at the same time their collective spirit and industriousness does not fail to impress. As a result, Becker’s affective thriller will slowly draw you in to a dark and complex world from which you will not want to escape.