When I got into movies, I was your stereotypical nerd who wanted to see all the best-rated movies of all time, mainly those in the IMDb’s top 250. Naturally, I noticed this film and knew I had to watch it, so when I did about 15 or so years ago, I was stunned. I remember feeling tense as fuck, I remember admiring this film, and I also knew when I would eventually start collecting physical discs, The Wages of Fear (or Le salaire de la peur in original) must be part of my collection. And when I rewatched it for The Wasteland Retrospective (a podcast I appear on once a month with Shane Conto), I was amazed by how much I didn’t remember, but also how perfect this movie was.
This movie starts with an hour where “nothing happens”. Except for the fact that everything happens, and this is where the groundwork gets set up for this entire film. And that kind of setup I miss in most movies nowadays because this film takes its time to tell and show us everything. How dead and uneventful this city is, how poor everyone in it is, but most importantly, we get introduced to our protagonists, and more importantly, because of this long introduction, we somewhat understand them by the time we go into “action”. Yes, I didn’t remember that first hour, but I can’t imagine it not being there. And even if you wanted to shorten it, that would remove all the impact of the tense scenes later on because this movie does an excellent job of you getting invested in these flawed characters. If you aren’t invested, by the time they are behind the wheel of those two potential death machines, you will not enjoy this movie.
That was another great thing I appreciated about The Wages of Fear – the characters are (mostly) flawed. I feel like if they made a film like this one nowadays, they would all be the same person – rough on the outside, but on the inside, they have a heart of gold when it counts. No, most of these characters are not that. And yet, you can somehow understand them, as this movie makes it clear that each of them has gone through some stuff (mostly World War II), hence the reason why they ended up in the town where nothing happens.
Where this movie excels the most is, of course, the tension. The story is about hiring four random guys to drive two trucks full of nitroglycerine that can explode at any moment because it’s better than going through the unions (as said by the businessman in the movie: “Because those bums don’t have any union, nor any families. And if they blow up, nobody’ll come around bothering me for any contribution.“). What always fascinates me is how, in a movie that’s now 70+ years old, the themes are as relevant today as they were back then. A big company trying to bypass unions and potentially kill their workers…? That could never happen today, right…? Anyway, this film has three intense set pieces where you will be on the edge of your seat. You can feel every bump, every dangerous turn, and it’s still, 70 years later, one of the tensest movies I have ever seen.
What makes it effective is, again, all the setup in the first hour and then you have the directing, like shooting on locations (as it was custom at the time) where you can see everything wrong with their road. Sometimes, it’s too bumpy; other times, the turn seems impossible. There is always something that makes this ride thrilling and unforgettable. Every time something goes wrong, and they have to “troubleshoot” their way forward, you root for them, and it gets tense. There are a few moments of levity, where you can breathe for a bit, only for something else to happen entirely. All I will say is that it’s great to employ the “show, don’t tell” technique, but in this instance, you could call it “show and then show the audience the aftermath”. Never in the history of cinema was the shot of tobacco getting swiftly blown away from the cigarette paper more meaningful and chilling than here.
It was during this rewatch that I realised how this film could be viewed as a sort of purgatory for all our protagonists. The last 20 minutes, when they have to cross an oil leak and go through that with no time to clean themselves, just go, because they need to be at their destination as soon as possible and they also want this journey to end, is phenomenal. When our “heroes” finally reach the end and you see the contrast of fire and them, it clicked for me how one of the ways to “read” this movie is this was their purgatory, but they didn’t redeem themselves and ended up in hell. That’s when everything clicked for me why they must have been mostly flawed characters, as this was more than a journey. The money they were supposed to get for this dangerous task was enough to last them for most of their life, but is it worth it if you lose your soul or potentially your life in the process? That is what made The Wages of Fear so excellent on this rewatch for me because I only remembered the tense scenes. But when I re-discovered everything around that, I recognised how magnificent this movie was, and the fact it still plays just as well today as it did back in 1953 is either a miracle or proof of how talented Henri-Georges Clouzot was.
Overall, The Wages of Fear is an excellent movie. If you have never seen it, do yourself a favour and watch it. If you have a BluRay player, there is a beautifully restored copy available that makes this movie pop. It’s one of the tensest movies you will ever see, one of the most beautiful movies you will see, and this rewatch confirmed this movie must be in my TOP 10/15 movies. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to write this is one of the best movies I have ever seen.
That’s all for this one! Did you see it? What did you think about it? Let me know!
Until next time,
Luke