The Wages of Fear (1953)

An existential thriller--the most original and shocking French melodrama of the 50s.

Deriving endless anxiety from brawny men moving as gingerly as possible, it’s a riveting anti-action movie, one of the most memorable high-concept pictures ever made in Europe.

The film's extended suspense sequences deserve a place among the great stretches of cinema.

The inspired calculation of action and agonised human reaction is irresistible and inescapable. It is a film that leaves the audience shattered and exhausted.

A precursor of The Wild Bunch, it is an expertly directed, personally felt film.

The excitement derives entirely from the awareness of nitroglycerine and the gingerly, breathless handling of it. You sit there waiting for the theatre to explode.

Wages of Fear rides for a cheap fall. Clouzot has copped out with cheap irony. [25 May 1967, p.31]

Hired by a corrupt American oil company to transport volatile chemicals across dangerous terrain, four men risk life and limb in pursuit of a rich payday. The job’s much too dicey for the refinery’s usual, unionized employees, but these louts are just desperate enough to throw caution to the wind and wager everything on their own driving skills. They’ve had their fill of kicking around a dusty, barren, South American nowhere town, waiting for work to materialize, and the mere thought of a big score has them spending the money before they’ve left the garage. The first act takes a while to find its footing, but once the rubber hits the road, The Wages of Fear is a master class in compounding suspense. Splitting time behind the wheel in two large, under-prepared equipment trucks, the men are soon at each other’s throats, stressed by the trying conditions and ever-present threat of mortal disaster. They weren’t exactly friendly before this endeavor, starting fights and waving weapons in a bar the night before, and the smothering anxiety only serves to fan those flames. Together, they’re forced to wind around a steep, jagged mountain road, cross a field of divots at high speed and slide through a lake of spilled oil, doing their best to cooperate (and often failing at that) while remaining hyper-aware of their payload’s touchy nature. The jerrycans of nitroglycerin that line their beds are so fickle, a bad bounce could blow them all to kingdom come. You just know that, eventually, something’s going wrong. It’s tough not to nibble a fingernail as the twin teams navigate one obstacle after another, balanced precariously on the metaphorical tightrope. When disaster finally strikes, the film doesn’t knock our socks off. It focuses on the shockwave over the shock and awe, a whisper of rushing air that sweeps crumbled tobacco from a half-rolled cigarette and then departs, like spirits headed into the afterlife. It seemed destined that only one truck would finish this adventure - the oil company suspected as much - but the real question is, can the survivors still find a way to band together and overcome? And, if so, at what cost?

One of the most gripping, edge-of-your-seat films you'll ever see. C'est merveilleux!

Outdated movie with many scenes, that are a bit ridiculous today. Anyway the story is not bad but too long: 2,5 hours.

The movie is good and I would give an 8, but for me that ending completely destroys the film. The outcome could and should be the same, but done differently.