The Hill (1965) - Sidney Lumet

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Synopsis (Wikipedia):

"In a British Army "glasshouse" (military prison) in the Libyan desert, prisoners convicted of service offences such as insubordination, being drunk while on duty, going AWOL or petty theft etc. are subjected to repetitive drill routines as a punishment in the blazing desert heat. The arrival of five new prisoners slowly leads to a clash with the camp authorities. One new NCO guard who has also just arrived employs excessive punishments, which include forcing the five newcomers to repeatedly climb a man-made hill in the centre of the camp."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hill_%28film%29

My Trailer:

(Some personal comments)

This is a very powerful social comentary film, that I admire because it denounces the rotten fascist regime inside every army in every country. When Stanley Kubrick made his film "Paths of Glory", the French Government threatened via diplomacy the countries of Belgium, Switzerland and Holland, in order for those 3 countries to ban the showing of the Kubrick film, that denounced the French Army's atrocities, against it's own french soldiers, during WWI.

Those 3 european countries were so afraid of the military might of Imperial France, that they were bullied by a French government behaving in the same fashion as Hitler did, when he occupied Czechoslovakia in 1938.

I could (and maybe I will) tell you stories of Cinema censorship in Europe (country by country), and it's fall, year by year, country by country, during the decade of 1970.

While Great Britain still has a severe form of Film Censorship today in 2020, of a religious/sexual nature, which is frequently put in question by the European Council, at least in 1965 they allowed this film with Sean Connery having one of the best roles of his career, while such a film would be banned in France (the bastion of sexual and religious freedom).




I actually created a beautiful musical trailer for Kubrick's "Paths of Glory", where I used a modern rendition in 3 languages, of the original sad song in the end.


Stanley Kubrick is very famous, and therefore I have little interest in discussing his work, except when I'm investigating the fall of Cinema censorship in Europe and I am faced with "Free France" and "Free Italy" as opposed to Fascist Portugal and Fascist Spain in the 1960's and 1970's. From spanish Franco and portuguese Salazar, friends of Hitler and Mussolini, since the 1930's, the last surviving dictators of Western Europe, one could expect political censorship in films, and it is understood. But what if it happens in France?






https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paths_of_Glory