Le Trou
How about this for authenticity – Le Trou opens not with music or credits but with a camera pan across to a man working on a car. Noticing the camera, the man gets up and says, (translated) “Hello. My friend Jacques Becker has recreated a true story in all its detail. My story. It took place in 1947 at the La Santé prison.” The man is Jean Keraudy, who led an attempted escape from the notorious Parisian prison, and he appears as himself in Becker’s dramatisation of it, perhaps the greatest prison escape movie ever made. Becker made the movie in 1960 and was dead within weeks of finishing shooting, which did wonders for … Read more
