Review Wanted: Le Trou
 

I never seen it or heard of it, but I ordered it. What did you think of it and did I do the right thing by getting it?

...ahh... which 'The Hole' are we talking about, you daring, eclectic, DVD collector from Illinois, you?...

- French director Jacques Becker's indelible 1960 prison drama?

http://reviews.imdb.com/Reviews/196/19673

- or the more recent, unutterably bleak movie from Taiwan?

http://www.canada.com/movies/review....iews/Trou.html

. . . ? ? ? . . .

This one.

I'm a great admirer of Jacques Becker's mature films, and I think that Le Trou and Montparnasse 19 are his best films. The comparisons to Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped are justified: they are both based on a true story, they involve plans for a prison break, they both contain a dubious character who may inform on them. However, while Bresson's film is fairly introspective, Becker's film plays more like a taut, suspense film. Becker's style is very fluid and stylistic, and less rigorous than Bresson. If you enjoy sustained tension films like Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear, this will be right up your alley.