WhenChristopher Nolanwas planning out what would become his masterpiece,Oppenheimer,he needed to figure out how to approach filming the two separate interrogation sequences that form the backbone of its narrative structure. Knowing that he had to find unique ways to continuously film inside two relatively un-exciting looking rooms, he andhis cinematographerHoyte van Hoytematurned to films of the past for inspiration on sniffing out camera angles for enclosed spaces. One particular film jumped out at Nolan and Hoytema for how it constantly found new ways to spice up the same barren location, and immediately cited it as a major help in his visualizing how he’d approach his vital dialogue scenes.That film turned out to beThe Hill, a grueling exercise in human cruelty, directed bySidney Lumetin a way that thrums with an exacerbated heartbeat on the brink of collapse.
What Is ‘The Hill’ About?
In the desert land of North Africa, there’s a British prison meant for British soldiers who have gone AWOL or gotten in trouble for insubordination. Under the tyrannical overview of Sergeant Major Wilson (Harry Andrews),prisoners are subjected to constant cruelty and dehumanization, mostly in the form of elaborate physical labors, like running up and down a dirt hill for hours on end in the blazing heat. Even though these are British soldiers being kept under British lock and key, there is no comradely love whatsoever, as Wilson and his staff see them all as traitors and atrocious disappointments. This is the environment in which a group of new prisoners, led by Joe Roberts (Sean Connery), find themselves dumped. Spurred on by Roberts' attempts at disobedience and how he tries to rally his cellmates into a similar morale,Wilson and his staff sergeant underling, Williams (Ian Hendry), take a special interest in grinding these men into the dust. If any of this sounds like the start of aCool Hand Luke-styletriumphant middle finger to “the establishment,” think again. This is a bleak and sticky experience, one that gets under the audience’s skin by throwing us in the same cell as everyone and filtering its mis-en-scene through the vision of how much influence the barbaric prison system is having on our protagonists.
The film opens with a series of shots that establish the layout of the prison and the daily ritual that the guards force all the prisoners to go through. We see how the prisoners are all made into regimented lines, like school children in single file, and how little it takes for the guards to insist any prisoner should be forced to run up that hill, still carrying their full kit on their back. We see how most of the prison is wide open dirt, that the hill is just a massive pile of barely sculpted dirt piled up at a steep incline, and how there’s no protection from the sun. Even when indoors, the living conditions are near nonexistent, even for the guards. Most of the early establishing coverage is done ina onerthat seems to soar high above the ground, giving us a bird’s eye view of the prison that we will be swiftly starved of, as the rest of the film will be sharply rooted inthe POVof those we’ll imprint on. Not only does this inform us of where everything important is and make the geography clear, it also gives us a sense of what the prisoners will have stripped of them: the freedom to see the wide open world and the ability to gain a clear perspective on the situation at hand.
Siney Lumet’s Camerawork Reflects Which Perspective Dominates
That division in visual perspective between the prisoners and the guards is where Sidney Lumet makes his mark and what drew Nolan’s eye. If you’ve seen films like12 Angry MenorNetwork, then you know that Lumet was a master at shaping his camerawork around the specific experiences of the characters at any given moment, with an evolving methodology behind it. Generally speaking, when the prisoners are left to their own devices in their cell, able to be themselves and mentally relaxed,the camera is more objective and remains unmoving and squarely focused on the prisoners. When the guards become involved, or it’s clear that the prisoners are acting under the influence of the guards' manipulation and/or abuse,the camera immediately becomes aligned to the guards' point of view. The camera moves a lot more, sometimes in a handheld way that implies the direct vision or motion of the guard, and other times it’s at an angle that emphasizes the guards' bodily position in relation to the prisoners.
Part of the trick to how Lumet makes his approach engaging is how he doesn’t become too married to any one tactic for the same visual concept. If he’s shooting a huge group of prisoners in a row, he’ll have one scene be pulled way back to emphasize the sheer amount of people, then a different scene will be shot with the camera panning slowly across everyone’s shoes as they stand at attention. If a head guard is lording his power over his prisoners, one scene will have the camera up in his face to underline every crevice of his sweaty and angry face, but another scene will have the camera behind his feet tilting upward, making him feel likean emperor holding courtbefore his peons. Seeing an angle of the hill that makes it seem like something Sisyphus couldn’t climb is bad enough, so why not have a POV shot of someone climbing that hill in a gas mask to really rub in your face just how physically draining that practice would be? Lumet’s direction constantly emulates that there’s no end to the myriad ways in which being stuck in a hot box like this prison would bea bureaucratic punishmentworse than death.
Christopher Nolan Responded To Lumet’s Ingenuity With the Camera
The camerawork works beautifully in conjunction with the greatest special effect in cinema history: the human face. Contorted and defeated, coiled with fury, drenched in sweat and mud, the extreme close-ups and tilted angles turn the characters' faces into embodiments of domination and desperation. While the whole cast is excellent, a special shoutout must be given to Sean Connery, who took on the role as a way of breaking out ofhisJames Bondpersona. He knew he had more to offer as an actor, and Roberts makes for a refreshingly undignified version of a rebel hero, who lives off of calculated conflict and gradually devolves into a screaming lump in the corner. It’s the kind of “brave” acting that Connery knew he was secretly better equipped for, and it’s a sign that people should have expectedhe’d eventually win an Oscar in his future.Lumet was a consummate actor’s director throughout his career, andThe Hillshows how far he could take a film purely carried on the backs of its actors.
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When Nolan described whyThe Hillwas such a find for him to draw inspiration from, he pointed out how it was made at a time before Steadicam, where all the camerawork had to be handheld or on some kind of crane. He called the movie “an extraordinary piece of work,” arguing that Lumet’s sense of camera motion was admirable and how the black-and-white nature of it helped inform his approach to the interrogation scenes, and he sought to model those key elements in Hoytema’s cinematography. I would argue that, in highlighting those elements, Nolan touched on a deeper element linkingThe HillandOppenheimer. Both films are ultimately about people who were once on the same side of a wartime conflict, finding themselves dogpiling on a formerly “heroic” individual who sought to stand up for what he knew was wrong. Roberts got himself thrown onto the Hill because he knew his commanding officer was giving him suicidal orders, and Oppenheimer gothis entire image as a national heroripped from him because he tried to warn people of the future he created. Both films see the souls of their protagonists publicly ripped up for all to see, laid bare across their faces, and Nolan tapped into how Lumet knew that the camera can X-ray straight through a person’s physical being from so many different angles to see right into their soul.
In a World War II North African military prison, British soldiers endure psychological and physical torment by their own superiors on a punishing manmade incline known as The Hill. The film explores themes of authority, resilience, and the human spirit under the harsh desert sun.
The Hillis currently available to stream on Tubi in the U.S.
