My discovery of this final film by the pre-New Wave director Jacques Becker has been a delight. It would surely be high on a list of films not to be screened for penitentiary inmates, this because it provides a detailed how-to depiction of a prison escape. We are introduced to four "long-timer" cell mates (Jean Keraudy, Michel Constantin, Raymond Meunier, and Philippe Leroy), who are planning to break out of Paris's La Santé Prison. A signal delight here is the almost documentary presentation of the process. Breaking through concrete walls and sawing through steel bars is hard work, and Becker takes his time showing this work. We also respond to the relaxed camaraderie of these men; their agreeably straightforward cooperation in this shared enterprise makes us forget that they are felons with some significant criminal behavior in their past. (The film rightly chooses to downplay this.) A fifth prisoner (Marc Michel), younger and less burdened by the penal system, is added to the group, and the uncertainty of his loyalty to the project adds an element of tension and ambiguity. "Le Trou" (The Hole) is a remarkable film--I've never seen a prison-break film quite like it- -all the more remarkable because it is based upon a true story, an attempted 1947 escape from La Santé in which the screenplay/novel writer José Giovanni and the actor Keraudy, here playing himself, were personally involved. This is an engrossing tale of a prison break effected, not with gunplay and violence, but with sweat equity, the plodding labor of men loyal to each other and to the plan. I heartily recommend it.

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You must see this film. It is almost a documentary in its realism. When the men decide to break thru the cell floor to start their tunnel, we see them actually spend the 5 minutes it took to break the concrete. The entire process. No cutaway shot to the finished opening. That kind of realism throughout the film helps make this movie tense and exciting. This really is a classic film that you must see!!! Rv

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This is a classic prison break movie similar in many ways (except a very different conclusion) to the wartime P.O.W. prison camp break movie THE GREAT ESCAPE. Some of the shots of men moving down a dark corridor with dim light moving along with them are quite memorable.

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