Anniversary of The Hill
On May 22, 1965 at the Cannes International Film Festival, Sidney Lumet's film "The Hill" premiered.
Lumet's film was nominated for the main award - Palme d'Or. But the jury of the festival, chaired by Olivia De Havilland, considered Richard Lester's film "The Knack ... and How to Get It" more worthy of this award. Meanwhile, among the 26 nominees for the main prize, in addition to the film "The Hill", there were such wonderful films as the Japanese film "Kaidan" directed by Masaki Kobayashi or the Czechoslovak film "Obchod na korze (The Shop on Main Street)" by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos.
But the Jury Special Prize for the best script was still awarded to Ray Rigby, the author of the script for “The Hill”. In many ways, the script of the film is based on the personal experience of Ray Rigby, who during the World War II was imprisoned for some time in a military prison.
Sean Connery literally asked for the lead role in this film. By the time Lumet began work on this film, Connery had already played in three Bondiana films and began to reasonably fear that the image of James Bond would stick to him tightly, as a result of which he would not be able to act in other roles. And although the role of Bond from film to film brought him ever-increasing fees - $ 20 thousand for the 1st film, $ 250 thousand for the 2nd film, $ 500 thousand for the 3rd film, he plunged into work with great enthusiasm in the movie "The Hill", which did not promise, and did not bring him any significant income. Nevertheless, he considered this role to be his triumph, since it convinced everyone that he was capable of playing dramatic and even tragic roles.
The financial performance of the film was not very impressive, but quite decent: with a budget of $ 2.5 million, box office worldwide totaled $ 4.3 million.
In the Soviet Union, the film was not shown.
69% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave "The Hill" a rating from 8 to 10.
Based on the above, the rating of the film "The Hill" according to FilmGourmand was 7.914, on the basis of which the film took 844th place in the Golden Thousand.
