The Hill by Sidney Lumet, with Sean Connery - 1964

When I first saw this film I thought a couple things:

1) It was probably inspired by the success of the Living Theater's "The Brig".

2) It was 1960s English revisionist history about the 'great' WW II generation. It's as if the generation making this film is saying, "Sure our fathers' generation beat the nazis; that doesn't mean our fathers' generation was made up of remarkably moral people. They were basically the same as us, if not more corrupt."

So in the 60s you get lots of films examining institutional corruption and this film examines corruption in the English military in WW II.

Basically the film is set in a camp set up by the English for English soldiers who need to be 'disciplined' or punished during WW II.  "The hill" is a form of punishment at this camp (prisoners are sometimes forced to run up this hill continually until they can't do it any more - as you might expect, someone in the film dies as a result of this).

Sean Connery is in the film as a guy who is falsely or unfairly sent to this camp.  You've got the nutty camp commander, the good officer and the bad officer, you've got racism directed at the 'colonial' soldier (Ozzie Davis) - lots of predictable stuff.  Yet, the movie was engaging and I wondered how the whole thing was going to end.

Also, when the escalator isn't working at the 53rd and Lexington subway station (it doesn't work most of the time), I walk up the escalator stairs anyway and I sometimes think, "Wow, this is like that stupid hill in that Sean Connery movie - hope I don't pass out today."

Access The Hill here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdzJdxa0e1s