THE WAGES OF FEAR (89)

Directed by: Henri-Georges Clouzot (1953)

Starring: Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter Van Eyck, Vera Clouzot

The Pitch: Assorted drifters, stuck in a dirt-poor Central American village, are offered big money by an American oil company to drive trucks full of nitroglycerine down treacherous roads.

Theo Sez: Henri-Georges Clouzot, pessimistic misanthrope extraordinaire, at his most masterly - one of the cinema's great action movies, and a lot more besides. Starting off in the kind of dingy Central American hell-hole I'm always a sucker for (see also NAZARIN, UNDER THE VOLCANO, TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE), it evolves into a thrilling open-air adventure, but the power has as much to do with psychological as plastic factors, character as well as narrative : the plotting has its little glitches - one sequence has the same premise as SPEED (truck can't go below 40 mph or it'll explode) but is much slacker about enforcing it - yet the plotting is a mere backdrop to the slow, pitiless humiliation of Vanel (tough-guy turned whimpering coward - a cautionary tale of an old man in a young man's world), the gradual emergence of Montand as Existential Hero, and the recurring theme of men at the mercy of larger forces, trying in vain to wrest control over their lives. The opening image (referenced, of course, in the opening image of THE WILD BUNCH 15 years later) is a bare-assed little boy pushing beetles around with a stick - just as the American oil company exploits Third World workers, and forces the film's no-hoper heroes into risking their lives (and betraying each other) in pursuit of the company's interests. Memorable atmosphere and at least three magnificently tense set-pieces, plus the best Death-out-of-nowhere moment I've ever seen (yes, even better than the shark in DEEP BLUE SEA!) ; and is there a mordant WW2 allegory here, with the German and Italian working as a team (albeit a sympathetic one) while the Frenchmen bicker and divide, some capitulating while others resist (why, after all, does the film end with what sounds remarkably - even more remarkably in 1953 - like an air-raid siren?)? Is there even a racial subtext, the casual racism of the first scenes (Montand has photos of white women on the wall, so he can "think of something else" when making love to blacks) linked to the oil-spill that later turns the white men black from head to toe, finally to the young Negro who gently (forgivingly?) inspects Vanel's body? Maybe just an action flick after all - but an action flick so heady it makes you find resonance and depth in every detail. Irresistible.