Le Trou 1960

Reviews (14)

1. H

   houvre 8 月 23, 2026

   me: do you mind if i put on some white noise to help me get to sleep? *puts on le trou*

   795 2
2. F

   Fritz Lewis 8 月 23, 2026

   Fuck Gaspard.

   1,217 17
3. C

   CinePhil 8 月 23, 2026

   La Shawshanque Rédemption

   702 1
4. R

   russman 8 月 23, 2026

   It’s nice that they hired only deaf prison guards

   3,121 9
5. E

   Edgar Cochran ✝️🍋 8 月 23, 2026

   -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

   1,010 39
6. S

   Sean Gilman 8 月 23, 2026

   Nothing more cinematic than digging a hole. An all-time great final line.

   816
7. S

   Stephen Gillespie 8 月 23, 2026

   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…

   695 28
8. S

   sakana1 8 月 23, 2026

   Initially, I found Le Trou alienating, because it seemed to prioritize process and action over people. As someone who is often drawn into movies by the characters rather than what they do, I felt almost intentionally kept at an arm’s length by this one, forced to engage with the minutiae of an escape attempt rather than the men making the attempt. Eventually, however, I realized something. While director Jacques Becker is, in fact, not particularly interested in his individual characters, he is very interested in how they connect — and don’t connect — to one another, and on the ways their escape plan is built upon their small, unthinking, collective rituals. Like the way the four original cellmates assess everything…

   303 17
9. N

   noen 8 月 23, 2026

   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…

   394 3
10. C

    cookie 8 月 23, 2026

    i really couldve watched those dudes hammer away at cement for hours

    1,579
11. 📀

    📀 Cammmalot 📀 8 月 23, 2026

    “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” Cinematic Time Capsule – 1960 Ranked

    316 4
12. M

    Mike D'Angelo 8 月 23, 2026

    82/100 Caught me off guard, so to speak. Halfway through, I was mentally drafting a companion piece to my mildly positive review of A Man Escaped—one that would praise the film’s procedural exactitude but express some frustration at its lack of human drama. I’d planned to wax semi-rhapsodic about how much screen time Becker devotes to watching concrete and cement get slowly pulverized, holding on the actors as they pound and pound and pound until your own biceps start to experience sympathetic aching. No doubt I’d have marveled at the lengthy sequence in which Manu and Roland first descend through le premier trou and explore the area beneath, which features multiple gorgeously forbidding shots of them walking down dark passageways,…

    530 2
13. S

    Steve 7 月 1, 2016

    This week’s Noir of the Week is Le Trou (1960) directed by Jacques Becker. The film was called The Night Watch when released in the US in 1960.

    The 2 ½ hour prison escape film, like Rififi, utilizes long, unbroken, often dialogue-free shots to dramatize the simple story of a group of prisoners attempting an ambitious escape from prison. Le Trou is shot in black and white and is totally without soundtrack music until the very end.

    The film begins with one of the escapees, now outside the Santé Prison walls introducing the story. The film then flashes back to the Paris prison in 1947.

    We’re then introduced to a young man Claude Gaspard. He’s put into a very small cell with four other inmates. There he meets the charming, always smiling Volsselin, nicknamed Monseigneur. Also in the cell are fellow inmates Roland Darbant, the man who introduced the film, Geo Cassid, and Manu Borelli.

    The men work in their cell assembling cardboard boxes. Gaspard finds out that the men in his cell all eat well from care packages from the outside and all are close friends. What he doesn’t realize is that the men are working on escaping. While picking up a care package filled with bread, butter, saugage, smoked fish and rice pudding, the men discuss whether the should tell the new guy about their prison escape plans. They eventually take Gaspard into their confidence and being the long task of breaking the floor.

    Slowly, in real time, the men chip away at the concrete floor that leads to a sewer tunnel.

    The film lacks most prison film clichés. There are no sadistic prison guards, and all the prisoners seem like regular guys. Director Becker, who died shortly after the film was completed, used unprofessional actors including Jean Keraudy who was an actual participant in the escape attempt in 1947.

    Given the film takes place in only three days, the sense of overwhelming tenacity shown by the prisoners is an astounding piece of filmmaking. The film has a number of memorable scenes, including the noisy breaking of the concrete floor with one of the bed legs –in real time- while another prisoner looks out the peep hole using a spy glass made from a tooth brush and a broken piece of mirror. Watching the scene draws you in an even makes you feel like a participant in the hacking, sawing and picking.

    I won’t give away the ending or any of the interesting plot twists, but let’s just say there’s a heart-breaking double cross involved in a very un-Hollywood finish. Young Gaspard has to bear the brunt of an ironic plot-twist at the end. The film is a great prison escape film not to be mistaken for the French New Wave happening at the same time.

    Written by Steve-O

14. J

    John Chard 4 月 21, 2014

    The 1947 Escape Attempt At La Sante Prison.

    Le Trou (The Hole) is directed by Jacques Becker and adapted to screenplay by Becker, Jose Giovani and Jean Aurel from Giovani’s own novel. It stars Michel Constantin, Jean Keraudy, Philippe Leroy, Raymond Meunier, Marc Michel and Jean-Paul Coquelin.

    Jacques Becker’s last film before he would pass away shortly after the film’s completion, is a tightly wound prison procedural that deals in grim realism and claustrophobic sparsity. There’s no prison movie clichés here, there’s no sadistic prison staff, no Mr. Big who is in with the wardens and demands money with menace, and no rapists hovering about the place to seize by force and break the last inch of spirit of the victim, this is as pure and unfussily raw as it gets.

    Based on a real escape attempt at La Sante Prison in 1947, story has four men in a cell plotting to escape via digging a hole in their cell. When construction work within the prison means a number of prisoners have to be relocated, the four men are a bit perturbed to find they have another inmate thrust into their already overcrowded cell. While of course there’s the small matter of the escape attempt that’s planned, will they be able to trust the newcomer? Will he join in and help? Pertinent questions hang heavy in the sweaty air.

    Once Claude Gaspard (Michel) arrives in the cell, the narrative initially operates on a cat and mouse basis as the men sound out the newcomer. There’s no histrionics, no threats of violence, an enforcement of machismo to intimidate the new cellmate, just human interaction with viable concerns. Much of these passages pulse with atmosphere as the men talk in hushed tones, or just exchange glances, and then once an accord is reached, all parties are comfortable with each other, it’s time to put the escape plan into action.

    What follows is quite simply engrossing suspense as Becker deals in long takes of silence punctuated by animal strength as the men pound on concrete with metal. The camera stays static, filming as if in real time, the sound department ramp up the volume to splinter the ears. We observe as the men fashion devices to aid their escape and to remain undetected, some of it genius in its simplicity. And all the while there is the feeling of trust, a bond between the incarcerated males, where the two lead off men are entrusted to go out and beyond the bowels of the prison, working tirelessly in charting the course through a maze of murky masonry, and to then return back to “HQ” for some rest and updates of the progress…

    The use of non professional actors works brilliantly, adding further realism to the story, with one of them, Jean Keraudy, a bona fide prisoner from the actual event back in 1947. There’s no music here, it isn’t needed to emphasise or manipulate a scene, none more so with the denouement, a closure of some emotional magnitude, and once again it’s without histrionics, and once again it works brilliantly. 9/10