Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 13-March-05
Spoiler Rating: Medium

The Wages of Fear (1953)

"The Wages of Fear" is the type of movie you feel proud of having discovered and will never fully forget. You could call it an art film, since it's a stark black-and-white picture that foreshadowed the French New Wave, or a character drama, since it deals with a particular set of men responding to a particular set of circumstances. But most people who see it will probably remember it as a masterpiece of suspense.

The movie opens in a sweltering Venezuelan backwater inhabited by poor natives and a mixed bag of hard-on-their-luck Europeans. The expatriates spend their days in the cantina scrounging for conversation, food, and the odd job that will enable them to go someplace else and get on with their lives. Although each has been schooled in hard knocks, even the young stud Mario (Yves Montand), they maintain a degree of pride in their status as white men with some fight left in them. Their expectant routine is shaken up with the arrival of a middle-aged Frenchman named Jo (Charles Vanel), who quickly becomes Mario's best friend and the cock of the walk. Shortly afterward, they get the call they've all been waiting for: a fire erupts in the oil field outside town and drivers are needed to haul nitroglycerine to the spot. Due to the extremely dangerous nature of this task, the American company who owns the field offers a large sum of money to whoever can make it through. It soon boils down to two teams: Mario and Jo in one truck, and a Dutchman (Peter Van Eyck) and an Italian (Folco Lulli) in the other.

Nitroglycerine will explode on the slightest provocation, so transporting a truckload of it over miles of questionable roads makes for a very tense situation. Director/co-writer Henri-Georges Clouzot milks it for all its worth, inviting viewers to gnaw off all ten fingernails while teetering on the edge of their seats. But even as the "Will they make it?" factor escalates, the film continues to explore the themes of courage and desperation introduced at the beginning. With death one small pothole away, the dynamic between Mario and Jo changes dramatically, and the forces that drove the four men to take such a risk come into clearer focus. Their stories lead to a broader social commentary about life in the 20th century, where the little guys have only their tolerance for horror to offer in exchange for survival. (The cruel gulf between the haves and have-nots is brilliantly symbolized when Mario and Jo turn black in a pool of oil, a source of wealth for the Americans but a dehumanizing stain for the men who will do anything for their miniscule share.)

"The Wages of Fear" starts with slow intensity, builds to excruciating anxiety, and ends with monumental perversity — all of it delicious. It's a rare film that has this much to say and says it with this much excitement.

Copyright © 2005 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.