If it’s the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
Girl there’s a better life for me and you.”
- The Animals, “We Gotta Get Outta This Place”
Many of the films of the 60s could be described as being stories of escape of some kind, including everything from Holly Golightly’s escape from country life and a loveless marriage in Breakfast at Tiffany’s to Marion Crane’s escape from low / middle class drudgery and harassment into a life of crime and eventual doom in Psycho. One could even describe some of the 60s films as audience escapes in such films as the James Bond series or exuberant movie musicals. These three films are more literal in definition, the first two being escapes from prisons of some sort, being the French prison of Le Trou and the German prison camp of The Great Escape, and the final, Dead Ringer, an escape not only from poverty, but also from identity.
Le Trou (1960, Jacques Becker)
I had never heard of Le Trou before I placed it in my Netflix queue (poetry unintended), but it ended up to be a film I will never forget. The title translates to “The Hole,” a word that is generally known as a slang term for a prison, but in the case of this film is also a literal reference to a hole that inmates dig in a corner of their cell in an attempt to escape. Le Trou is based on a true story, as it seems most prison escape films are, save The Shawshank Redemption and a small handful of others, and the director truly makes an effort to capture the realism of the tale. Becker, in fact, goes to great lengths in this endeavor in a few ways, one of them being the hiring of non-actors to fill the roles of the inmates, regular looking fellows one would perhaps expect to see in a prison environment. One of the actors is actually an inmate from the real life escape attempt from the La Santé prison in 1947. This “actor” introduces the film.
The film begins as we follow a young inmate, Gaspard, being put into a crowded cell with four other prisoners. The four are facing incredibly long sentences. However, we don’t know much else about them, allowing us as viewers to perhaps confabulate or ignore whatever their crimes may have been in order to curry our sympathies. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what they have done in order to fuel the plot and action. Quickly, these prisoners must decide whether or not they can trust Gaspard. In a brief enough time, they determine that it is, if not wise, at least necessary in order to complete their goal. The prisoners are nothing if not resourceful, volunteering for “box-making” duty, not only to keep themselves busy, but to have their stack of flattened boxes to use as a convenient cover to place over the titular hole in the corner of the cell.
Some of the more realistic aspects to this film, aside from the non-actors, are the absolutely meticulous scenes and the lack of a score. We see close-ups of the hands of prison guards as they slice up sausages into small segments, plunge their hands into soaps and cheeses, systematically going through every care package in the search for contraband. The first actions involved in the escape are equally detailed, with long, unbroken shots of the prisoners using a rod from a bed frame to start hammering into the concrete floor and not resorting to a montage until nearly five minutes later. In this way, we sense the arduousness, the anxiety, and the difficulties that these prisoners face in this endeavor. We are escaping with them. It is brilliantly put together. As mentioned, the only music that appears in the film is in the closing scene and credits. Otherwise, throughout the rest of the film, we are left to feel a realistic tension that is not “dramatized” or escalated by the presence of a score. There’s a twist at the end, one I won’t reveal, but the line that comes from one of the characters in response to the turn of events is profound.
The Great Escape (1963, John Sturges)
Whereas Le Trou is atypical as far as most Hollywood films go, after all, it was made in France, not Hollywood; The Great Escape is absolutely typical of the Hollywood film, and the antithesis of Le Trou in style and atmosphere. Instead of “real” looking people, we have the chiseled, blue-eyed Steve McQueen and the slightly less-chiseled but still attractive James Garner, along with our requisite tough guys, Charles Bronson and James Coburn. Instead of a music free tense atmosphere, The Great Escape is packed with a rousing score by Elmer Bernstein, which has since gone on to become one of the most recognizable pieces of film music in history. Further, the civility shown between the warring sides here is most likely fiction, even though it, too, is (somewhat) based on actual events, at least historical certainties of POW camps in WWII. Though, I suppose the POW camps could have been different than the concentration camps.
This is not to say that The Great Escape is a bad film, but rather just a different one as compares with Le Trou. With such big Hollywood and international film stars, the events tend to become more glamourized by default. Yet, the planning, choreography, and dangers in the escape are palpable and riveting. And, lest you think that this is an overly sanitized version of events, there are moments of cruelty and arguable unwarranted shootings. In a mirroring of heist films, each prisoner has a duty or an area of expertise. As such, they also get memorable nicknames such as “The Ferret,” “The Scrounger,” or “The Tunnel King.” But our main point of focus is “The Cooler King,” so named because of the time spent in solitary, played by McQueen. If there is one thing to truly criticize in the adaptation from real life events to novel to screen, it is the focus of Americans as the more cunning escapees and stars of the film. In reality, American prisoners had little to nothing to do with the actual escape attempts.
But, with those things in mind and set aside as mere annoyances in storytelling fiction as opposed to truth, this is an enjoyable film. McQueen’s performance is one that surely cemented him in Hollywood legend and perhaps elevated him to the status of icon, especially with his motorcycle stunts. The music helps to establish a dramatic tone throughout the film as one of hope amidst diligence, as opposed to what it could have been, which is incredibly dour and despairing. As an action film, the right decisions were made, but it is definitely interesting to see the comparison which a film as diametrically opposite as Le Trou, despite covering similar topics.
Dead Ringer (1964, Paul Henreid)
Dead Ringer is another film that was a pleasant surprise, as one that I had not heard of, despite its star director and legendary star. Bette Davis is magnificent playing twin sisters, Margaret and Edith, a feat she had performed eighteen years earlier in A Stolen Life. Karl Malden is equally magnetic and engaging as Police Sergeant Jim Hobbson, the man in love with Edith, the poor sister. While Edith is poor, living in a squalid apartment above a jazz club in an alley (albeit a Hollywood studio alley, nearly sterile), her sister, Margaret, is extraordinarily wealthy, living in a mansion that has been used in over 81 films and television shows, including The Social Network, The Big Lebowski, X-Men, and There Will Be Blood. Margaret’s husband dies and Edith, three months’ behind on her rent and about to be evicted, concocts a plan to eliminate her sister and take her place.
Whereas some of today’s thrillers might focus on the tension leading up to the murder, this film gets to it in a hurry, as the more interesting part is how Edith psychologically deals with the guilt (if any), smartly maneuvers through this new life, and ultimately is found out. Please, how else could it end? The murder itself is tastefully done, cutting quickly from the seated Margaret’s face as she turns to face the gun creeping in from the side of the chair to the jazz drummer’s sticks hitting the snare from the club below. At first, Edith’s plan seems flawless. She cleverly ensures that the murder looks like a suicide based on poverty and depression, and has the real Margaret’s arm fall from a position that would match a self-inflicted gun wound. She later uses subtle and sly tricks to make sure that the mansion’s staff doesn’t let on to her lack of knowledge about the geography. When it comes to a point at which she must learn to sign her sister’s signature, she cunningly, but perhaps insanely, picks up a hot poker with her right hand in order to be forced to sign with her left to mask the discrepancy.
Ultimately, a few unexpected wrinkles do her in. For one, Duke, the Great Dane that belonged to her late husband, hated Margaret, but loved Edith. Duke, the only non-human character in the film, is the first one and the only for quite a while, to know the difference. The maid and the butler seem to be taken aback by her unorthodox behavior, in opposition to the behaviors of the real Margaret, but remain in the dark. Peter Lawford, who plays Margaret’s boy toy, eventually tricks her into revealing her true identity, but his harsh treatment of her leads the dog to attack and kill him. As Edith is tried for the crime of killing Margaret’s boyfriend, she makes one desperate attempt to convince Sergeant Hobbson that she is, in fact, Edith, but he cannot believe that the woman he fell in love with could commit such heinous acts. She, somewhat unbelievably, gets the death penalty, and Hobbson asks if what she said was true, if she truly was Edith, but she denies it, knowing that she had truly succeeded in escaping her previous life, yet could not escape her resultant fate. One of the more moving moments of the film comes when the butler approaches her and asks her what she would like him to say at the trial. “You knew the whole time?” she asks him. It appears that Edith was much better to the staff than Margaret was, and that means something to them. It is a truly memorable moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment