lasttimeisaw A 4K-restoration screening in the Shanghai International Film Festival, Clouzot's pièce-de-résistance is a vehement testimonial of his aptitude in orchestrating white-knuckle thrills and chills, meanwhile, it is also a scorching dissection of human's abject fear and cruelty. Set up in the boondocks of Las Piedras, allegedly Venezuela, a posse of foreign deadbeats is vegetating under the blistering sun, jobless and hankering for a plane ticket to leave the purgatory, they are churlish opportunists and rowdy bar brawlers, among them stands the French ladies' man Mario (a sexpot Montand), who toys with the affection of the barmy barmaid Linda (Mme Clouzot in her film debut), and has no qualms about jilting his benevolent Italian roommate Luigi (Lulli, truly the salt-of-the-earth type), to hobnob with his blow-in compatriot, the ex-gangster Jo (Vanel), fancying an easy way out, but the truth is, Jo is also at the end of his rope. A perilous job opportunity emerges when the American corporation Southern Oil Company needs to transport nitroglycerin to extinguish a massive fire in the oil fields, four drivers are chosen to drive two trucks in conveyance of the highly explosive products in a 300-mile rugged haul, with no safety precautions at hand The sideswipe of American capitalistic avarice and callousness is pretty much in your face, yet, for these hardscrabble expatriates, $2,000 is an offer too tempting to refuse, after some backhanded maneuver Jo gets the last spot to drive with Mario, while Luigi is paired with Bimba (Van Eyck, stolid and unbelievably cool), a taciturn German who endures a dark past.Henceforth, Clouzot viz. the Gallic Hitchcock takes audience on an ensorceling edge-of-the-seat road trip where one single substantial bump can cause their trucks to be blown up to smithereens, like a ticking bomb hanging over our heads. Compelling set pieces, a gripping turn on the precipice, and detonating an obstructing rock, one mobile, one static, are textbook paragon of tension-building and suspense-eliciting, not to mention the effect graced by Georges Auric's captivating accidental music.However, physical obstacles aside, it is the mental exertion that takes a heavy toll en route, Jo, the hard-nosed, savvy spiv, gradually yields to the mounting fear and his cowardice starts to turn Mario from his toady to a hectoring boss, sending contempt and verbal abuse to a humiliated Jo, up to a merciless last-ditch attempt knowingly leaving him mortally wounded, here Clouzot's astutely differentiates true grit from Dutch courage, and examines the phallocratic pride with utter acumen, its reverberations is astounding, much also owing to the two protagonists' unyielding tours-de-force, especially Vanel, completely devotes himself to the grueling condition (that petrol wallowing sequence is awestruck), and more credibly, he tenaciously enlivens Jo's transformation from a despicable wide boy to a resigned old geezer, for whose aftermath we feel deeply sympathetic. Our compassion towards Montand's Mario also undergoes a sea change when the plot thickens, his raffish charm morphs into an admirable determination midway, until his ruthless color takes the upper hand, Montand perfectly showcases his marquee idol charisma, and his baptism-of-fire triumph is unqualifiedly hard-earned, but Clouzet ratchets up the morbid irony in its dizzy ending, as augured by its opening, the quartet's fate is hanging on the same thread, negligible, expendable and inescapable.Incontrovertibly, THE WAGES OF FEAR is a daunting progenitor for late comers to emulate but impossibly to surpass, denotes a hefty import of Clouzot's unrivaled cinematic legacy, that reinvented narrative cinema with its high-octane vicariousness.

grantss In a remote South American town, four men are hired by an American oil company to transport two truckloads of nitroglycerin to an oil field, to put out a fire. It's a very hazardous task - the nitroglycerin can explode for the slightest reason, the road is treacherous and the journey is a long one. However, the money is very good and their current situation in the town is rather dire - they will do anything to improve their situation. Great thriller-drama by French director HG Clouzot. Starts slowly and even once the hazardous journey is in progress, it doesn't seem that brilliant. However, Clouzot builds the tension and from a point it is absolutely nail-biting stuff. The scene with the boulder has to be one of the most tense movie scenes I've watched in my life. A good character-drama too - the way the characters develop and the relationships between the four change adds a new dimension to the drama and makes for very engaging viewing.Not perfect though. Some events and plot devices don't make much sense, though aren't crucial to the movie. The ending felt quite silly and contrived. A similar result but with a more plausible, less predictable, less stupid way of getting there would have seen the movie get a perfect score.

classicsoncall 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.

Anssi Vartiainen The setting is a dead end South American village in the middle of nowhere. Its only distinguishing feature being an American oilfield some distance away from the village. But then an accident causes a fire to spread into the oil and the only way to stop it is to literally blow it out. With nitroglycerin. The only problem being that they don't have the safety equipment needed to transport the nitro from the village. But "luckily" such villages have no shortage of men at the end of their ropes, willing to do anything for a final paycheck.And that's essentially The Wages of Fear in a nutshell. It's about human desperation and about ever-mounting stakes as the tension keeps rising and rising. Every little tremor or stone on the road could send all four men into the sky in a fiery explosion of primordial forces. And even though you're safely hunkered on your coach, behind the reality line of a TV screen, you can't help but sweat in anguish alongside these men. The film is that well shot.That being said, it takes its sweet time getting there. The first portion of the film is spent getting to know the village and these four wretched souls. And while they are interesting personalities, played by talented actors, it still drags quite a bit. And that's partly because at that point you don't have much of an idea where the film is going. Most of the loose threads get tied up towards the end, but a good half of the film is a jumbled mess.But that other part where they're actually transporting the explosives is so good that it more than makes up for the weaker first half. Recommended for all fans of intense.