Le Trou

Le Trou (1960) is a French crime thriller you can watch online on iFILM. It was the final film by director Jacques Becker, drawn from José Giovanni's firsthand account of a real escape attempt at Paris's Santé prison in 1947.

Four inmates — Geo (Michel Constantin), Roland, Manu, and Monseigneur — have already mapped out a route when a fifth man, Claude Gaspard (Marc Michel), is moved into their cell. His trial hasn't happened yet. Theirs are almost done. They hand him a bedpost and put him to work. Becker shoots the whole dig in painstaking real time: concrete chips, dust, darkness, the muffled sound of guards above. No score, no cutaways.

One of the actors, Jean Keraudy, who plays Roland, was an actual participant in the original break. The film regularly appears on critics' all-time lists of the finest prison dramas ever made. Watch Le Trou online on iFILM.