There’s an extended sequence in Jacques Becker’s Le Trou in which the cellmates take shifts using a crude metal slat from a bed frame to penetrate and dig all the way through the concrete floor to the next level down. The work is filmed practically in real time so the viewers feel the hopelessness of the task punctuated by the feeling of possibility with each breakthrough, the clang of each impact like the pounding of the human will, the risk of a sudden guard visit adding the chill of suspense to the proceedings. It’s a brilliant example of the film’s overall tone, one of procedural precision and the kind of brotherhood found on battlefields, made all the more compelling by the fact that it’s based on a real-life escape attempt at La Santé Prison in 1947 and stars one of the actual convicts who participated in that event (Jean Keraudy). Considered by many to be the greatest prison break film ever made, Le Trou stars Michel Constantin, Philippe Leroy, Raymond Meunier, and Keraudy as the four cellmates whose escape plan is potentially disrupted by the arrival of a fifth, Claude Gaspard (Marc Michel), an inmate who’s been moved from a cell block currently undergoing renovation. Becker manages to follow the men through every step of the plot, beginning with fashioning a lookout device from a shard of mirror, while sustaining tension with almost no relief except the trust the men have in each other. (The film is a masterful depiction of male friendship, the gestalt of their instinctive collaboration removing any need for gratuitous feelings.) Constrained primarily to a prison cell, Cloquet’s camera takes wings once the men enter the underground passages, on several occasions shooting the convicts as they walk ahead and disappear into the blackness of the tunnel’s far end. Music credit goes to Philippe Arthuys even though the entire film is without a score until the very end.