Eric Red Recommends #1

Last Updated on July 28, 2021

By ERIC RED


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WAGES
OF FEAR (1953)
RATING:
5/5
Director:
Henri-Georges Clouzot.


Writers: Jérôme Géronimi,
Clouzot.
Based on a novel by Georges Arnaud.




Cast:Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter van Eyck, Folco Lulli.






Buy the DVD here

The Mac
Daddy of all visceral adrenaline-fueled action adventure movies, this 1954
French classic by director H.G. Clouzot (who filmed the original “DIABOLIQUE”)
is a truck thriller shot in black and white so gritty you can taste the diesel
and smell the hot tire rubber.  

The set up
is simple and classic. Four men trapped in a shithole South American oil town
are offered large cash if they accept a suicide mission to drive two decrepit
trucks loaded with the highly unstable liquid explosive nitroglycerine across
rough jungle terrain, so the company can use it to blow out an oil fire. The
vehicles are jerry-rigged and the jungle roads treacherous–one good jolt and
you get blown to smithereens. The down-on-their-luck heroes are broke and
desperate enough to accept the grueling job that offers them a chance out of
their grim situation. There is no exit for anyone in this existential universe.
Fate becomes an uncredited character.

It is the
genius of “THE WAGES OF FEAR” is that it is a vehicular action movie that mostly
goes at 5 M.P.H.  It is film of and about suspense. Despite the ever present
threat of gigantic explosions and instant death, the picture’s tension derives
from set pieces that involve the potential of what could happen—-A wooden bridge
begins to give way when the truck catches on a cable, a tire stuck in a hole has
to be treacherously lifted out, the meticulous siphoning of nitroglycerine drip
by drip in order to blow up a roadblock, even the relentless close-up of tires
slowly driving over rocks. 

I love how
this movie keeps you on the edge of your seat with little of the over the top
unconvincing CGI action bombast of today’s 100 million dollar summer
movies. Sometimes, less is more and it is not how you show it but how you don’t
show it. In fact, when a truck finally does blow up, Clouzot doesn’t show the
explosion, just a gust of wind blowing the tobacco off the rolling paper of a
cigarette–a moment more powerful and startling than the biggest pyrotechnic rig
would have been on screen. An example of the truly great filmmaking that won the
film the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.

Like all
movies, none of the action would matter if you weren’t involved in the
characters and the film presents four unglamorous and believable
protagonists–Mario, a handsome grifter, Mr. Jo, a middle-aged fugitive, Luigi,
an affable and hard working but ailing Latino laborer and Bimba, a cold-blooded
Dutch ex prisoner of war. Drifters and gangsters, the men find out what they are
made of during the nerve-wracking journey as the brave become cowards, the
uncertain become bold, some find surprising reserves of resourcefulness and
nerve as friendships are forged and broken, but God doesn’t play favorites in
this hopeless universe. Admirably, there’s little if any back-story to the
characters who are dramatically revealed in the present tense—character is
action. Supercool French actor Yves Montand stands out in the lead as the
gentleman drifter Mario, showing why he was the George Clooney of his day.

This movie
demonstrates the power of black and white movies, a lost art. The coarse black
and white cinematography injects a feel of documentary reality and atmosphere
that could never have been achieved in color—one of the things that hampered
William Friedkin’s spellbinding color remake, “SORCERER.” One word of advice–be
sure to make it through the sluggish beginning and hang in there until the guys
get in the trucks, because then the film shifts gears into pure white-knuckle
suspense cinema at its finest. Criterion has a fine DVD edition out. 

BUY “WAGES OF FEAR” HERE