Wages
of Fear
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1953 Starring:
The plot is about a bunch of out of work European and American expatriates that are more or less stranded in a South American town because they have no money to get out. An oil well about 300 kilometers away has an oil rig go up in flames and the only way to put it out is with a blast of nitroglycerin. The nearest nitro is in the town where our out of work expat's are. It is a suicide mission that the oil company is willing to pay $2000 per man as long as a truck's cargo reaches the oil rig intact. The workers union won't allow any of their workers to embark on so dangerous a task so the local oil rig manager has to recruit four volunteers to drive two trucks without shocks on a bumpy road carrying 100 pounds of nitro each. There are many more volunteers than there are positions so the oil rig manager takes them out to test their driving ability. Four men are picked but one who was left out is a local tough guy called Jo who is wonderfully played by Charles Vanel. He gets the forman to agree that he will be the back up if any of the four men picked don't make the 3 am starting time the following morning. That night Jo takes one of the drivers home and low and behold, that guy doesn't make the 3 am deadline the next morning! This is a somewhat long movie at 148 minutes and at about 1 hour into it the drive with the nitro starts. They crawl along at first, slowly building their speed and their courage. But as it turns out, Jo is not the tough old man he thought he was. The other man in his truck is his friend who he recently met in this forsaken town, Mario (Yves Montand). As Jo breaks down Mario has to take over and is determined to survive the journey and collect his money so he can get out of the town with his sweetheart, Miss Légitimus (Darling Légitimus, who is also director Henri-Georges Clouzot's wife). The other two men in the other truck were sent a half hour after the first truck as a precaution but with Jo's stalling and slow driving they quickly catch up and pass the first truck. They run into obstacles along the way and a lengthy scene were they have to back onto a partially built wooden bridge is extremely nerve racking. I won't give any more away but the end of the movie is simply not one that would have happened if this film would have been made in Hollywood. In fact there was a remake, 1977s Sorcerer. A goofy title but the remake is actually a good movie, directed by William Friedkin and starring Roy Scheider. The dvd itself for Wages of Fear, part of the Criterion Collection, is a great looking transfer (for a 50 year old movie) but there are no extras at all on the disk, not even a trailer. There are several minutes of footage on this cut that were deleted in the original US theatrical release, not for lewdness or graphic violence, but for making a fictional US oil company look like an uncaring and greedy company. Imagine that. If you could buy just one French new wave film with subtitles, this one would certainly be a good choice. But since you are obsessed with this buying dvd's thing like I am, you can buy as many as you can afford. This retails for $30 which is a little on the high side, especially considering the no extras, but if you can get it in the $20 range I would consider adding it to your collection like I did. |
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17 Oct 02 |
