Le Trou
With LE TROU, Jacques Becker delivers one of the most stripped-down and intense prison escape films ever made. The film is based on the novel by José Giovanni, himself a former prisoner who was involved in the real escape from La Santé prison in Paris in 1947.
When a new inmate arrives in the cell, it quickly becomes clear that his cellmates are working on a meticulously prepared escape plan. Using the most basic tools—a spoon, pieces of metal, their bare hands—they begin to dig a tunnel. What follows is a process of extreme concentration: measuring, listening, scraping, remaining silent. Every action is calculated; every mistake could be fatal.
Notably, Jean Keraudy—one of the real participants—plays himself in the film. Becker also deliberately casts non-professional actors, resulting in performances stripped of theatricality: direct, physical, and unembellished.
LE TROU is not a conventional thriller, but a precise study of collective discipline and trust. The tension lies not in plot twists, but in rhythm, repetition, and detail. The act of digging becomes an almost ritualistic choreography of bodies and sounds, where friendship, loyalty, and suspicion constantly shift.
A protégé of Jean Renoir and director of both period (CASQUE D’OR) and contemporary (TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI) crime films, Becker reached a radical culmination with this work. He died at the age of 53, shortly after filming wrapped, making Le Trou read inevitably as a testament: an uncompromising film about collaboration and betrayal, and the fragile line between freedom and downfall.
DE GENOMEN BENEN IN DE NOR
FC Dollyshot and De Cinema join forces once again, this time for an open-air screening series this summer at De Nor (Middelheimlaan 59, 2020 Antwerpen)—the free-spirited space run by visual artist Dennis Tyfus in Middelheim Park. DE GENOMEN BENEN (THE GREAT ESCAPE) brings together three films from the 1950s and 60s that approach imprisonment as a system, a mental condition, and a struggle for escape.
In THE TRIAL (17/06), Orson Welles presents a world without logic: a trial without charges, a system that never stops. Le Trou by Jacques Becker follows five men and one plan—no heroics, only precision. In UN CONDAMNÉ À MORT S’EST ÉCHAPPÉ (19/08), Robert Bresson reduces escape to pure discipline.
A triptych on resistance—from system to body, from collective to individual. One Wednesday evening per month: as the sun sets, the projector flickers to life.
