The Wages of Fear is Henri-Georges Clouzot's masterpiece, and probably the most suspenseful film ever made. Not only is it a sustained two and a half hours of nail-biting, but also a great examination of poverty, courage, American exploitation of Latin America, desperation, and the lengths that people will go to just to survive. Plus it's got humor, great characters, and most importantly, is entertaining as all hell. It's a damn-near perfect film.
The story concern four guys desperate to earn some cash, with the lead being Yves Montand as Mario. They are hired by an American oil company to deliver two trucks of nitroglycerin to an oil well that burst into flames. They have to drive extremely carefully because the canisters can explode if they are jostled too roughly. Oh, and the path to the oil well is rocky, with twisted mountainous roads, rotting bridges, dips in the road, and other disasters in their path. Mario's partner, a fellow Frenchman named Jo who was an arrogant toughguy who pounded his chest and stuck guns in people's stomachs, turns out to be a pants-shitting coward who makes Mario's trip all the more difficult. Two hours of tension ensue.
What I love about this movie is that the first half hour is devoted to fleshing out the environment that these characters live in, their personalities, and how everyone treats each other. Mario's a bit of an asshole but also likable, and everyone's abrasive personality stems from the desperation of their environment. There's no jobs, no money, and no hope of escape. These characters are truly stuck in place and can't get out, so it makes sense that they would jump at the chance to sign up for a job that is, in effect, a suicide mission. In fact, the danger of the job doesn't even seem to register for the characters until they are in the trucks and driving. When they get hired, they are all smiles and good cheer, thinking ahead to the money they'll be getting at the end, without seriously considering that they will probably die on the journey.
There are a lot of great scenes of the trip, with the most famous being the tobacco in Jo's cigarette being blown away when one of the trucks explodes. I think one of the scenes I liked the best was the one immediately following, when Mario and Jo come across a dip in the road where the explosion took place. They need to get across, but it's rapidly filling up will oil. Jo goes in to guide Mario along, but in the process he is unable to move out of the way fast enough and gets his leg crushed by the truck. Mario clearly likes Jo, but his frustration with Jo's cowardice combined with the need to finish the job combine to make this scene tragic and understandable at the same time. When he's driving the truck to the destination with a dying Jo cradled in his arms you feel that he does care for him and is heartbroken by his death, a death that he is responsible for. It's a punch to the gut, but you don't blame Mario for what he did.
The ending is, for me, the only real false note in this film. On one hand, I get the irony: Mario spent so much time having to drive carefully that now he's able to be a bit more reckless, and this leads to his demise because he had the illusion of his own control over his truck. However, even with this being my second viewing, I still thought, "that was stupid." I'm not sure how else Clouzot could have ended this movie, but this felt kind of obvious and I personally didn't like it. It's not that I loved Mario so much that I felt it was an unnecessary move to kill him, it just felt cheap to me, and it certainly wasn't helped by the cheesiness of his girlfriend Linda fainting at the same time.
Regardless of the ending, The Wages of Fear is one of the best suspense films ever made, and one of the most entertaining films in the Criterion Collection. By now you know that I rank my enjoyment of a film above all else, so for now this film is going into the top ten. Surprisingly, I can't put it over Andrei Rublev because once I finished watching this movie, I was good. I can probably wait another year or so before watching it again, but I'm still wanting to put aside three hours to rewatch Andrei. Meanwhile, I do think this was a more entertaining film for me than High and Low, so #9 seems to be a fair spot.
The List
Next time: I get some much-needed comedy when I go on a journey with Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits.
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