The Wages of Fear (1953)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Wages of Fear (1953) – H.-G. Clouzot

Nail-biting suspense here, although director Henri-Georges Clouzot takes his time to develop the characters and their desperate straits before really getting stuck into the action.  Yves Montand plays Mario, one of a group of expats stranded in a poverty-stricken South American village, doing odd jobs to get by, but mostly leeching off his friend Luigi (Folco Lulli) and messing around with barmaid Linda (Vera Clouzot).  When older gangster-type Jo (Charles Vanel) shows up looking to make money, he makes contact with the American oil company drilling in the area, looking for an angle.  Nothing doing, so he parks himself at the local saloon and riles up the other expats as their frustrations mount.  Then comes news that one of the oil rigs has caught on fire; the Americans need to get some nitroglycerine to the site to stop the burning. To save money, they decide not to wait for safer modes of transport and offer $2K to anyone willing to drive ordinary trucks loaded with nitro across rough terrain for 300 miles. The danger is high, but the men are desperate.  Mario, Jo, Luigi, and Bimba (Peter van Eyck) sign up and commandeer two trucks that leave at dawn, spaced 30 minutes apart.  The rest of the 156 min film is the tense journey, the obstacles along the way, the interpersonal disputes, the stoicism, the fear, the mishaps (if that word can be used for this sort of disaster).  Like many a noir or heist film, The Wages of Fear is a procedural with the characters taking stock of each new problem (for example, a huge boulder stuck in the path) and devising a solution to get beyond it. All the while, the trucks are poised to blow up with the slightest wrong move.  Grand Prix winner at the Cannes Film Festival that year (before the Palm d’Or was introduced as an award in 1955).