The Wages of Fear
Excoriated in an Eisenhower-era Time magazine review as “a picture that is surely one of the most evil ever made,” The Wages of Fear is admittedly merciless in its manipulation of its audience’s nerves. But Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 Palme d’Or winner is also undoubtedly a masterpiece, both as one of cinema’s all-time suspense classics, and precisely for the bristlingly anti-American-imperialist subtext that so appalled Time.
In fact, that review was published upon the film’s heavily edited U.S. release in 1955, which was shorn of 50 of its supposedly most inflammatory minutes. Beginning this Thursday, TIFF proudly presents a newly struck, full-length print to open its seven-week, 12-film tribute to a director widely regarded as Hitchcock’s French language counterpart.
At two-and-a-half hours, Clouzot’s original cut might seem daunting by the standards of contemporary thrillers, particularly as it takes nearly one of those hours to truly get its show on the road. But when it does, that show is so volatile, and the road so perilous, that the results remain agonizingly tense, even half a century on. Essentially the anti-Speed, The Wages of Fear sees four desperate men tasked with hauling hundreds of gallons of nitroglycerine across 300 miles of treacherous terrain. Given their cargo, any substantial jostle will prove instantly and explosively fatal, and Clouzot exploits the suicidal scenario to deliver a series of indelible, heart-in-mouth set pieces.
The lengthy prologue, by contrast, set in a limbo-like Latin American oil outpost, almost feels like a separate story, but is integral in establishing the protagonists’ malaise, and in investing The Wages of Fear with its potent political and philosophical undertones. Stranded European transients Mario (Yves Montand), Jo (Charles Vanel), Bimba (Peter van Eyck), and Luigi (Folco Lulli) spend their days languishing in a local cantina, blithe spectators to the exploitation of the impoverished locals by a ruthless U.S. multinational. Too poor themselves to buy tickets out of town, their opportunity arises when an oil field accident necessitates the transport of the nitro, and the company offers a substantial sum to non-union drivers foolhardy enough to attempt the delivery.
The outcome is a harrowing, death-defying journey, and a film that succeeds both as an immaculately crafted, high-stakes melodrama, and a brilliant exercise in anti-capitalist existentialism. Despite multiple attempts to remake Clouzot’s adaptation of Georges Arnaud’s novel, the ’53 original—down to its staggering final scene and blunt force “FIN”—endures as one of cinema’s true essentials.