The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)
IN CONTEXT
GENRE
Drama
DIRECTOR
Henri-Georges Clouzot
WRITERS
Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jérôme Géronimi (screenplay); Georges Arnaud (novel)
STARS
Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter van Eyck, Folco Lulli
BEFORE
1943 Clouzot’s caustic drama Le Corbeau tells the story of a poison-pen writer who signs his missives “The Raven.”
1947 Clouzot’s third movie, Quai des Orfèvres, is a crime drama set in postwar Paris.
AFTER
1955 In Clouzot’s taut and twist-filled Les Diaboliques, two women take revenge on a sadistic headmaster.
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear is a juggernaut of suspense driven by greed and desperation. A contemporary and friendly rival of Alfred Hitchcock, Clouzot succeeds in gripping the viewer with a nerve-wracking story. Four men, Mario (Yves Montand), Jo (Charles Vanel), Luigi (Folco Lulli), and Bimba (Peter van Eyck), are desperate to escape life in a grim South American village. When they are hired by a ruthless US oil company, they think it’s their ticket out. But they are told to drive trucks of nitroglycerine across a wilderness of potholes, crumbling ledges, and rickety bridges to put out an oil fire hundreds of miles away. Not everyone is expected to make it back alive.
The movie exhibits a low opinion of men’s motives, and an even lower one of the aggressive capitalism that exploits them, but first and foremost it’s a movie about terror: a white-knuckle adrenaline ride. From the treacherous road that threatens the trucks, to the fire-and-brimstone finale, each set piece is more gut-wrenchingly tense than the one before.
Mario (Yves Montand) accidentally runs over Jo (Charles Vanel) in a pool of oil.
What else to watch: Le Corbeau (1943) ✵ Eyes Without a Face (1960) ✵ Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno (1964) ✵ Duel (1971)