The Hill (1965)
I watched this mostly because I was curious about movies made with Sean Connery in his early years. And I was surprised at how vigorous this movie was. It's a very male movie (the only woman who vaguely appears seems to be for the pleasure of one of the men's pleasure) and it has a lot of sweat and exhaustion and shouting. This isn't bad-rather, it's defining. The movie is about a very physical survival mode required in a military prison camp made for rehabilitation of "bad" soldiers.
And one of these soldiers is Connery, who comes with some kind of heroic history that makes the camp commanders determined to break him soon. Another is played by Ossie Davis, a Black actor with an acting lineage going back to Sidney Portier. This group of soldiers is made to climb "the hill," a fabricated mound in the middle of the camp where the heat and effort wear the men down.
So it becomes a battle of right and wrong (the soldiers being right, whatever their mistakes in the past). And a fight of personalities-not only between the camp officers and the prisoners, but between prisoners and even between the camp officers, who vary from malicious and sadistic to good hearted with a torn conscience.
The movie works. It partly succeeds from how its acted (with intensity) and filmed (with lots of gritty close-ups and hard lighting). The director, Sidney Lumet, has an interest in being "serious" and yet still attract a large audience. There were a few directors like him in this period (like John Frankenheimer) and their movies are always interesting. I think "The Hill" is far too much of a contrivance, however. It starts on its path of conflict and simply escalates and intensifies. There is a moral guidance all along that makes you get involved, emotionally, but you know that you're in a set up, a kind of modernist playright's trap.
I have to put a plug in for Oswald Morris in charge of cinematography. He has other great credits, like "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" and "Sleuth" which are gorgeously filmed, and here he almost makes the film. Imagine (if you see it) that this was done in a more factual manner, with more distance from the faces, and maybe a sense of editing that made the facts clear but not emphatic. Morris makes it impossible to not feel the trauma.
Which brings us back to the acting-Morris again (with Lumet pointing) makes the intensity of the acting take on relevance and conviction. It's all affecting.
If only the whole arc of things wasn't quite so inevitable and unimaginative. I guess sometimes life is exactly as shown.
I watched this mostly because I was curious about movies made with Sean Connery in his early years. And I was surprised at how vigorous this movie was. It's a very male movie (the only woman who vaguely appears seems to be for the pleasure of one of the men's pleasure) and it has a lot of sweat and exhaustion and shouting. This isn't bad-rather, it's defining. The movie is about a very physical survival mode required in a military prison camp made for rehabilitation of "bad" soldiers.
And one of these soldiers is Connery, who comes with some kind of heroic history that makes the camp commanders determined to break him soon. Another is played by Ossie Davis, a Black actor with an acting lineage going back to Sidney Portier. This group of soldiers is made to climb "the hill," a fabricated mound in the middle of the camp where the heat and effort wear the men down.
So it becomes a battle of right and wrong (the soldiers being right, whatever their mistakes in the past). And a fight of personalities-not only between the camp officers and the prisoners, but between prisoners and even between the camp officers, who vary from malicious and sadistic to good hearted with a torn conscience.
The movie works. It partly succeeds from how its acted (with intensity) and filmed (with lots of gritty close-ups and hard lighting). The director, Sidney Lumet, has an interest in being "serious" and yet still attract a large audience. There were a few directors like him in this period (like John Frankenheimer) and their movies are always interesting. I think "The Hill" is far too much of a contrivance, however. It starts on its path of conflict and simply escalates and intensifies. There is a moral guidance all along that makes you get involved, emotionally, but you know that you're in a set up, a kind of modernist playright's trap.
I have to put a plug in for Oswald Morris in charge of cinematography. He has other great credits, like "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" and "Sleuth" which are gorgeously filmed, and here he almost makes the film. Imagine (if you see it) that this was done in a more factual manner, with more distance from the faces, and maybe a sense of editing that made the facts clear but not emphatic. Morris makes it impossible to not feel the trauma.
Which brings us back to the acting-Morris again (with Lumet pointing) makes the intensity of the acting take on relevance and conviction. It's all affecting.
If only the whole arc of things wasn't quite so inevitable and unimaginative. I guess sometimes life is exactly as shown.