THE HILL

In the 1960's Sidney Lumet made a number of films in Britain and "The Hill" is the best of them. Indeed, "The Hill" is one of the finest films Lumet ever made anywhere. A war film unlike any other, the entire action takes place in a British military stockade where British prisoners are sent for punishment, (you could say it's a prison film unlike any other), and it's run by a couple of sadists. The hill in question is a large sand construction in the middle of the stockade that prisoners are forced to run over in full kit under the hot desert sun, (the setting is North Africa).

As photographed by Oswald Morris we endure their agonies with them and it's very easy to hate Ian Hendry's sadistic Staff Sergeant and Harry Andrews' R.S.M., maybe not a sadist but a martinet of the very worst kind. Neither actor was ever better; indeed the ensemble cast of Ossie Davis, Alfred Lynch, Roy Kinnear and Jack Watson, (the prisoners), and Ian Bannen and Michael Redgrave, (among the staff), are superb. The star prisoner, of course, is Sean Connery in the best acting role of his career up to that time. This was the film that established Connery as an actor to those who saw him simply as James Bond. The plot involves the death of one prisoner and of Connery's determination to bring those responsible to justice. A remarkable piece of film-making, it's hard to believe that this was once a play.