It's easy to describe Henri-Georges Clouzot as the French Alfred Hitchcock. Clouzot was most famous for his thrillers, and once even beat Hitchcock to adapting material he was interested in. This resulted in the classic "Diabolique," which would go on to inspire "Psycho." However, Clouzot was equally proficient in other genres, directing the historical romance "Manon," the comedy "Miquette," and the astonishing documentary, "The Mystery of Picasso," which I was very tempted to write this entry about. And unlike Hitch, Clouzot wrote or co-wrote most of his films.
Still, when I think of Clouzot, I inevitably always come back to "The Wages of Fear," a taut action thriller from the '50s that would be remade in the '70s by William Friedkin as "Sorcerer." It has some of the greatest suspense sequences ever filmed, following a group of men in South America who have been hired to transport nitroglycerin through rough country on a pair of trucks. Too much jostling could set off the unstable explosives, killing whoever is close by, so every roadblock becomes a life-or-death situation - boulders in the road, rotting bridges over plunging precipices, oil spills, sharp turns, and worse.
The film runs over 150 minutes, and nearly the first hour is spent setting up the four men hired to do the job, and the enormity of the risk they are taking. Once the actual journey begins, however, their chatter falls away, the spectacular sound design takes over, and the tension becomes unrelenting. Little by little the danger grows and escalates. The trucks are sometimes forced to inch their way forward, up a mountain, trying to avoid almost certain disaster. Every narrow escape just makes the men more paranoid. The smallest setbacks are magnified to feel insurmountable, and basic car trouble has never seemed more harrowing. During my first viewing, I hardly noticed the length of the film because I was so absorbed by the suspense.
I didn't appreciate the themes of "The Wages of Fear" until after multiple viewings. Clouzot famously considered the film to be about courage. The four men engaged for the journey have been thrown together by fate, all European expats stuck in a dead-end town, trying to make enough money to escape. Initially, the job is seen as a windfall, as opportunities are few and far between. Inevitably, however, the tension becomes too much and they start to lose their nerve. The filmmaking is bleak and impartial, as the men come to realize that no matter how they struggle, their fates will be decided by luck more than skill. Where they come from and who they are don't matter in the face of danger. Our lead, played by Yves Montand, is shown to be an unpleasant brute, but his worst actions are committed out of fear and panic rather than malice or greed. Acts of bravery seem to be born of instinctual self preservation. It's a remarkably cynical outlook, one I can't imagine would play well to broader audiences today.
Then there are the political messages. For ages, the film could only be accessed in the United States in heavily edited form. The oil company that hires the desperate men is an American outfit, and clearly an exploitative, unethical one. They treat the men as expendable, forgoing safer delivery options so that the nitroglycerin can be transported more quickly. This was deemed too political, and potentially anti-American, so roughly thirty-five minutes of early scenes were deleted from the U.S. version. Ironically, this is the least successful part of the film, and I suspect that the shorter version plays better because it gets us into the thick of the action faster.
The angry, cynical tone of the film reflects a filmmaker who was often described as angry and short-tempered on set, with a penchant for nihilistic, misanthropic material. He was criticized in his time for being pessimistic and morbid, but Clouzot was passionate about his work. He would go on to further success but his popularity was fairly short-lived and he didn't direct many more films after "Wages of Fear" and "Diabolique." His most prolific period ended with the death of his wife, Vera, who appeared in three of his films, including "Wages of Fear." The lone female character, Montand's girlfriend, was created for her by Clouzot.
What I've Seen - Henri-Georges Clouzot
The Murderer Lives at Number 21 (1942)
Le Corbeau (1943)
Quai des Orfèvres (1947)
Manon (1949)
The Wages of Fear (1953)
Les Diaboliques (1955)
The Mystery of Picasso (1956)
Les Espions (1957)
La Vérité (1960)
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