Production Budget Analysis

The production budget for Le Trou (1960) has not been publicly disclosed.

CAST: Michel Constantin, Jean Keraudy, Philippe Leroy, Raymond Meunier, Marc Michel, Jean-Paul Coquelin DIRECTOR: Jacques Becker CINEMATOGRAPHY: Ghislain Cloquet MUSIC: Philippe Arthuys PRODUCTION: Filmsonor, Play Art, Titanus

Box Office Performance

Le Trou earned $34,588 domestically and $-1,401 internationally, for a worldwide total of $33,187. The film skewed heavily domestic (104%), suggesting strong North American appeal.

Profitability Assessment

Insufficient publicly available data to assess profitability.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

PRODUCTION NOTES

▸ Production

According to the 1964 press materials that are included in The Criterion Collection DVD, Jacques Becker first read of the 1947 La Santé Prison escape attempt in a newspaper. Years later, he found out that José Giovanni had fictionalized the same escape attempt in his 1957 novel The Break. Becker contacted Giovanni's publisher, Gallimard, and Becker and Giovanni collaborated on the screenplay of Le Trou.

During production, Becker hired three of the attempted escapees as technical consultants. One of the consultants, Roland Barbat (using the stage name Jean Keraudy), appears in the film as the character Roland Darbant, who plans the escape tunnel and improvises all the tools they use.

Barbat also appears at the beginning of the film as himself, working on a Citroën 2CV. (Barbat became a mechanic after prison.) He states directly to the camera that we are about to see his true story.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Summary: Nominated for 2 BAFTA 2 wins & 4 nominations total

CRITICAL RECEPTION

The Hole has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 94% based on 18 reviews, with an average score of 8.59/10. Dave Kehr, writing for Chicago Reader, hailed it as "the last great flowering of French classicism; the 'tradition of quality' here goes out with a masterpiece." The New York Times' Bosley Crowther noted that the non-professional actors "play their roles with such simple, natural force that they become not only bold adventurers but also deeply appreciable friends." "As long as men have been placed behind bars" wrote Kenneth Turan, "they've plotted to escape, and those plans have powered prison-break movies without end. But even in that large group, "Le Trou" stands apart."

Whilst praising the film otherwise, Richard Brody of The New Yorker wrote that Becker's "deeply empathetic, fanatically specific view of his protagonists leaves out some elements. [José] Giovanni was no common criminal—a Nazi collaborator, he blackmailed, tortured, and murdered Jews during, and even after, the Occupation. The charm of France’s underworld depended not just on criminals’ own code of silence but on Becker’s, and on all of France’s."