The Wages of Fear (1955)

An action-packed slog

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

In a shanty town somewhere in South Africa, men come from all over the world to run away and hide. Jobs are scarce and hunger is common. They are free to walkabout but soon realise that the town is one big prison as any of the men lack money to get a ticket to fly out of here.Salvation comes in the form of an oil field fire several hundred miles away. The task is to drive two trucks packed with nitroglycerin explosives to put it out, but the roads are treacherous one nasty bump and the truck can go boom. Hopefully one of the trucks can make it through, the prize is $2000 each to any of the drivers make it to the oil field fire and deliver their cargo.Corsican Mario and the much older Jo drive the heaviest truck. Mario flirts with the waitress in the local bar. Jo is a new arrival on the run from Paris with a reputation as a gangster. However once they start their treacherous journey, Jo gets the shakes and is frightened. It is Mario who is determined to finish the journey.Director Henri-Georges Clouzot made a classic film of men putting their lives at risk for money but it is also a character study as well. Mario is at first in awe of Jo as he arrives in the small town. Jo persuades Mario to get on this venture and he will show him the ropes. When the drive begins, Mario is initially frightened but gets the upper hand and starts to bully Jo around as age has finally caught up with him and Jo is scared.The film starts off in a leisurely manner as we see these disparate group of men, bored, causing trouble at the local bar. The tension soon mounts as four of the men begin their dangerous journey.

Clouzot tells a tale of suspense and drama that man finds himself captive to. The thing that creates the drama is very straightforward and easy to grasp (a truck full of nitroglycerine). I think it is that simplicity contrasted with the complex and impossible to understand nature of man that makes this story so compelling and successful. Definitely worth checking out.

As a kid watching TV shows and movies in The Fifties, I can't tell you how many I ran across that had nitroglycerine as part of the plot. There were at least a couple of Westerns along with straight dramas, but it didn't seem to matter the genre. A souped up hot rod carrying four quarts of nitro that just happened to be hanging around was used by the main character to destroy "The Giant Gila Monster" in a campy 1959 monster flick.Whatever the fascination with nitroglycerine, and it had to be it's unpredictability, the idea of carrying around a ton of it was the premise of this film, "The Wages of Fear". Actually, it was two trucks carrying a ton of nitro between them, I guess to heighten the drama and provide twice as much in the way of nerve shattering tension. The thing is, unlike a host of reviewers who hold the picture in the highest regard, I really didn't get a whole lot out of the movie.For starters, the first forty five minutes or so was used to introduce characters and situations that eventually had nothing to do with the outcome of the story. Yves Montand portrayed his character Mario well enough, but the guy was just a reprobate for the most part. He consistently berated the lovely saloon gal Linda (Vera Clouzot), and actually threw her in the dirt when he drove off on the mission to deliver the goods. Same thing with his partner Jo (Charles Vanel), who started the picture as one of film's ruggedest macho men, and turned into a cream puff when the going got tough. I just didn't understand how characters would just suddenly switch their basic personas as the story progressed.Then there's the adventure on the road. Maybe I missed it, but what was the rationale for that wooden bridge turnabout that both drivers had trouble with? Was it that the size of the trucks wouldn't allow for a smooth ninety degree turn? Even so, after the first mishap with the truck driven by Bimba (Peter van Eyck), why would Mario feel compelled to back his truck right to the very edge of the unstable platform? It didn't make sense to me.And then, showing his contempt for Jo, Mario runs him over in that manic oil pit scene. I have to admit, that was the stunner for this viewer. That scene had both actors earning their paycheck, and it rivals the clay pit scene in "The Defiant Ones" with Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis for sheer insanity, in another Fifties action flick. Both are just hellacious, you be the judge.Except for that scene, most of the rest of the story didn't hold the same amount of interest for me. When the truck with Bimba and Luigi (Folco Lulli) blew up, I thought that it would have been better served if there was a close-up of the two men in the truck hitting a rut and offering a grimace just before fading to black and then showing the explosion. That would have better sealed their fate; I had to wonder why no one thought of it.With all that, I don't mean to imply this was a terrible picture. It's watchable enough, but just doesn't seem to measure up to the accolades it's given as an IMDb Top 250 film. But that's the case for a lot of others as well, so in this case, maybe it's just me. On another day I might have seen it in an entirely different light.

Since becoming a fan of his work after seeing the astonishing 1949 movie Manon,I was thrilled to spot a 3 disc boxset of auteur film maker Henri-Georges Clouzot on Amazon UK. Struggling to decide which one to watch first,I found an excellent review on IMDb's Film Noir board,which led to me putting all my wages on fear.The plot:Stuck in a dead end town, Mario,Jo, Bimba and Luigi try to make ends meet,as a big US corporation (boo!) controls the nearby oil fields. Taking part in "shady" dealings,the company gets a tight grip on the town,which forces the people to stay silent over the abuses,due to it offering the only jobs in town.Discovering that one of the oil fields has erupted,the company decide that the only way to stop it is to use nitroglycerine.Going round town offering a handful of cash,the company grab the attention of ex-gangster Jo,the quiet Bimba,the quick-witted Mario and the warm, hard working Luigi. Getting told that they have to drop the nitroglycerine off to the oil field in trucks,the gang soon discover one major,risky problem:the oil field is 300 miles away on a road of death.View on the film:Flying in at 2 and a half hours,co-writer/(along with Jérôme Géronimi) director Henri-Georges Clouzot (who broke a leg whilst filming) and cinematographer Armand Thirard sink the trucks into an engulfing Film Noir atmosphere,where low-lighting allows the smallest glimmer of hope to be seen in the town. Keeping a close eye on every turning of the wheels,Clouzot brilliantly uses tightly held,lingering shots to build a mood brimming with anxiety over the title.Stomping down the Film Noir road, Clouzot makes every sharp turn land with an unrelenting thump,by blazing down scorching hot whites with mud and grit gathering every drop of sweat,which is burnt away by the oily Film Noir doom being lit on the horizon.Piped down from Georges Arnaud's novel,the screenplay by Clouzot and Géronimi beautifully spends the first hour giving the viewer an opportunity to (almost) interact with each character,from Mario's abrasive,Film Noir loner nature, to Jo's sincere desire to drive by the Film Noir darkness. Expanding on one of his major themes drawn from the very beginning of his credits,Clouzot gives the characters an inability to escape from the Film Noir oil fields that they are driving into,by making each pedal pressed pull them all away from a paternally safe "stop point",into a decaying road of ruthless doom,paved with grubby cash. Grabbing the role after Jean Gabin turned it down for the character being a "coward", Charles Vanel gives an incredible performance as Mario,thanks to Vanel keeping Mario's humble roots shining as the oil of Film Noir streams over Jo and Mario. Crushed into a million pieces, Yves Montand gives an incredible performance as Mario,whose rough edged smile Montand chips away at to hit a Film Noir loner who will roll over anyone who gets in the way of a handful of cash,as Jo and Mario rage with fear.