The Wages of Fear (a.k.a. Le Salaire de la Peur (1953))

Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot; produced by R Borderie and H G Clouzot

In an isolated South American village dominated by an American oil company, four men are seeking ways out. Mario (Yves Montand) is a French ex-patriate, dreaming of Paris; Jo (Charles Vanel) is a big talker with big plans; Bimba (Peter Van Eyck) ekes out a living as a driver; Luigi (Folco Lulli) is a dying man who wants to go home to Calabria. For a small fortune each, they are hired by the oil company to transport nitro-glycerine in trucks over crumbling mountain roads, decrepit bridges and treacherous mires, a route of which every mile could be their last.

The Wages of Fear is a fine cinematic work on a number of levels. The most obvious is that it is an exciting, often tense, drama. It can’t really be called an action movie, since much of the suspense comes from inaction, or at least, slow action. It’s also a drama of characters, showing their personalities despite giving very little information about them. Lastly, and fittingly most vaguely, it is a cynical essay on life.

The direction is first-rate, though that is not immediately apparent. The beginning is slow, as it depicts the characters and their desperate situations. But the viewer sees story-telling in the direction. For instance, in a scene in which Mario and Jo are discussing conditions in the village, they walk and talk through searing heat, downpours, dust-storms, all illustrating what they must put up with, while narrating their predicament with words.

But when the journey to the wells begins, Clouzot’s talent becomes more evident, because he has to show that the men are constantly in danger, yet cannot stress it all the time. Indeed, such is the journey that there are numerous hazards aside from the obvious, and these are handled so well that one forgets that there is still the nitroglycerine to worry about.

The script makes clear that none of the four men is safe; when Bimba hits on a plan to use the explosives to blow away a huge boulder blocking the road, the audience has no idea whether it will succeed or, if it does, if someone will be killed anyway. In this, the writing takes a fatalistic approach: a man’s skill can help him only so far. Luck plays a bigger part, and random chance the biggest. Some events occur the causes of which are never known. This isn’t contrivance; it’s the way life is sometimes.

The film does have weaknesses. The needless sub-plot, if it can be termed that, featuring Mario’s apathetic relationship with his girlfriend, Linda (Véra Clouzot), is a distraction more than anything else, and was likely included to give a rôle to the director’s wife. (His brother also contributed, more productively, by co-writing the script under the pseudonym Jérôme Géronimi.) The denouement is more ironic than realistic.

The faults in The Wages of Fear are few, and are amply overwhelmed by the merits of the movie. A film filled with slow, creeping tension, rather than overt scares, The Wages of Fear is rightly considered a superb thriller.