The Hill

A British military prison in North Africa during the Second World War. The punishment is simple: prisoners climb an artificial hill in full kit, over and over. The film never shows an enemy; all the violence is internal to the institution. Sean Connery took the part to escape being fixed as Bond and said so plainly: the only reason the backers put money into The Hill was his reputation from those films. Shooting began in Almería, Spain in September 1964 in temperatures above 45 degrees. Oswald Morris's hard black-and-white photography is the film's strongest asset. It screened at Cannes in 1965, where Ray Rigby won Best Screenplay. It took six BAFTA nominations and won for cinematography. Commercially it did not work. Lumet and Connery went on to make four more films together. Who it is for: viewers drawn to films about institutional cruelty and the machinery of authority. Who it is not for: anyone wanting variety. The cast is entirely male and the film is deliberately airless, which reads as repetitive to some.