Tonight I had the great pleasure of going back to the Armer Theater at CSUN for a special screening of Jacques Becker's "Le Trou", which was hosted by Professor Schultheiss, who was also the host for Becker's "Touches Pas au Grisbi" in February. Professor Schultheiss is retired from CSUN but was part of the Radio, TV and Film department for many years. Nowdays, he hosts about four screenings per year and I never miss them because his pre-show lectures are so good and he always chooses amazing films. I had seen "Touches Pas au Grisbi" on my own, years before the Professor showed it on the big screen, so I knew how great it was going in, but tonight he prefaced his talk by saying, "if you liked 'Grisbi', 'Le Trou' is even better. In fact it is Becker's masterpiece".
No less a name than Jean-Pierre Melville, the great director of French crime films, called it "the greatest movie ever to come out of France".
That's quite an endorsement. While I would have my own candidates for that accolade, including "Diary Of A Country Priest" (Bresson) and "Children Of Paradise" (Carne), after seeing "Le Trou" this evening I cannot argue the assertion by Mr. Melville. "Le Trou" is a great film by any standard, French or otherwise, it's got an 8.5 rating at IMDB, and it is without doubt the greatest "prison escape" film ever made. And man it is ever a nail biter.
Young Marc Michel (from "The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg") is being held in a maximum security Paris prison on a charge of the attempted murder of his wife. As the film opens, he is being transferred to a new cell already occupied by four inmates. The prison is a hellhole, though somewhat clean and orderly. But it epitomises the meaning of confinement. The four prisoners already in the tiny cell are like a band of brothers. They share everything they have, all the food packages they receive, any goods they can procure from inside. They are not sure whether to trust the new guy Michel, but he wins them over by sharing his own more abundant packages, sent from his girlfriend, his wife's sister. The fact that he is a womaniser leads his cellmates to trust him even more. He looks like a pretty boy but really he is just as tough as they are.
So they let him in on a secret. They are planning to escape. Each one of the four is doing long-term hard time and has nothing to lose. Indeed, young Michel may have a long sentence handed down to him after his upcoming day in court, even though he swears he is innocent and tells a convincing story. But when it comes down to his word against his wife's.........who is a Judge gonna believe?
In these kinds of cases, a "he said/ she said" crime, women always have the upper hand, even when they are the instigators. Sorry to tell you that fact, but it is true. Young Michel's only hope is that his wife will drop the charges against him. As he tells it, she was trying to kill him with a shotgun. He tried to take it away from her and she wound up being shot in the shoulder. He tells a straight faced story, it is believable, but because his wife told it differently he is now facing years in prison.
So, when his cellmates tell him of their escape plan, he is all in.
Most of the 133 minute film has to do with the physical work of making the escape happen; the removing of floorboards in the cell, the pounding of the cement foundation to get through to the cellar beneath, and then the searching and memorizing of the sewer system underneath the prison, which, when tracked, will lead to an upward escape outside the prison walls, at street level.
Much of the action involves digging and cutting. Digging in this case also means a lot of pounding, hammering away on cement walls with improvised iron tools made from bedframes.
These guys take turns hammering and pounding away. One guy keeps a lookout through a peephole in the cell door, using a small rectangle of mirror tied to a toothbrush that acts as a periscope.
In the hands of a lesser director all of this relentless non-stop endurance might become tedious, scene after scene of the inmates pounding away at their escape tunnel. But Becker uses his skill with sound design to place our focus on the "tings" of the hammering tools and the "zzzzz, zzzz, zzzz" of the hacksaw, and the fallback of the pieces of concrete that are removed. We see the work the men are doing as if we were right up on their shoulders, but even more so we hear it. They are in a tightly confined space and this is what the claustrophobia and tension of a prison escape would look and feel like.
I can't imagine a more realistic depiction.
While the emphasis is on the digging, there is always the possibility of a cell inspection at any moment, even in the middle of the night. This fact of prison life is driven home repeatedly, the lack of not only privacy, but of a chance to truly rest. Prison conditions are explored here, though it must be said that - considering the crimes at hand - the inspections are not altogether unfair.
Still, you find yourself rooting for the escapees, just because this is a character study. If it were real life, you would be rooting for them to be caught, because we are all scared of criminals. Only in the movies can you have the Noble Escapee, and yet this film was based on a true story, so go figure.
Imagine yourself in prison, preparing to serve a life term. Now imagine that you and your cellmates have thrown all caution to the wind and have prepared an exacting escape plan, one that will require not only precision timing and extraordinary luck, but most of all a physical effort bordering on the Herculean that can only be sustained by a consistent surge of adrenaline.
This is the upper limit of human willpower in action, sheer mind over matter. What you are watching onscreen is exactly what you would be experiencing if you chose the impossible task of trying to tunnel your way out of a labyrinthian prison fortress with only improvised hand tools to assist you.
And would you finally make it out? Would you complete your escape?
Maybe so, but in this case I cannot tell you for obvious reasons. All I can say is that "Le Trou" may be, in the final analysis, the ultimate "anti-crime" film, because if there has ever been a cinematic message for not ending up in prison, this is it. /////
This is one of those films for which I reserve the highest honors and elevations of Thumbs Up. It's an endurance test, but only because you are there, in the cramped cell and down in the tunnels with the escapees. You are pounding away at the concrete with them. But as the viewer, you are never bored for a second, for the very reasons I have just described.
If you were actually a prison escapee, in real life, you would never be bored during your escape attempt. Scared witless maybe, but not bored. And so is the case here in this most realistic movie.
Rent it or buy in on Criterion, the restoration is spotless with incredible sound design.
See it, see it, see it.
And I will see you in the morning. Tons of love I send you. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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