The Wages of Fear poster & wallpaper

Charles Vanel, Folco Lulli, Peter van Eyck

Four social outcasts are hired to transport two truckloads of unstable nitroglycerine to an oil fire at a U.S.-owned drilling site in Central America.

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Unrated, 2 hrs. 28 min.

Directed by: Henri-Georges Clouzot

Release Date: January 1, 1953

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DVD Release Date: January 26, 1999

Stats: 502 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (502)

  • her69eyes
    May 16, 2009
    her69eyes
    In his time, legendary filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot made a name for himself as "the French Hitchcock". When you watch "The Wages of Fear", it's not hard to see why. It is one of the most entertaining, suspenseful, and frightening films you'll ever see.

    Upon the original relea...( read more)se of "Wages of Fear", there were a few sequences cut from the U.S. version of the print. These scenes were heralded as anti-American as they revolve around a ruthless American oil company. This, however, didn't come off as anti-American to me - rather a sort of criticism of all major corporations. The oil company in "Wages of Fear" is willing to sacrifice men because they don't have family nor do they belong to a union - a tactic to avoid messy lawsuits. This obviously is not a criticism of the American public, rather a criticism of American big business practice.

    The film begins in the poverty-stricken Latin American town of Las Piedras. Because transportation is so expensive, the citizens of the town are largely trapped in the hellhole. Therefore, those stranded in the village can only try and scrounge up enough to eat and drink as they wither away. Our "hero", if you want to call him that, is Mario (Yves Montand), a Corsican in exile who is determined to make it back to France. Soon, he befriends Jo (Charles Vanel), an aggressive and intimidating gangster who has just arrived in town.

    Soon, the men are met with an opportunity to raise enough money to escape. Miles away, a well fire erupts. To put it out, an oil company chooses four men to drive two trucks loaded with nitroglycerin to the site. Mario's driving skills makes him one of the four, and Jo is suspected to have murdered a man to take his position. The two in the other truck are Luigi (Folco Lulli), Mario's old roommate, and Bimba (Peter Van Eyck), a German man. The problem with this mission, however, is that the slightest bump will cause the nitroglycerin to explode. Given that the roads are primitive and the site is hundreds of miles away, the trip is a suicide mission, to say the least.

    The majority of the film is made up of suspense sequences involving the obstacles of the road. One scene involves a narrow turn that requires maneuvering over an unstable wooden platform, and another involves a long stretch of road that the trucks must drive across at a certain speed in order to minimalize the vibrations from the bumpy ride. These scenes are a perfect example of great film editing, and the suspense they build without crutches like tension-building music is astounding.

    "The Wages of Fire" is perhaps one of the most entertaining pictures you'll ever see. Although the set up seems overlong, it's necessary to establish the relationships between the four main characters. Charles Vanel is unforgettable as we watch his transformation from tough guy into coward, and iconic images such as Mario and Jo driving while covered in oil will stick with you forever. A marvelous film, one of the best you'll ever see.
  • pier007
    May 5, 2009
    pier007
    I don't recall when was the last time I felt so enervated and powerless for the fate of characters in a film. The perfect drawing given to them by the cast and director, plus the existential tone and the imminent danger displayed kept me concerned for their safety all the way, to...( read more) a degree that it was almost uncomfortable or even painful to experience their odyssey.
    A real nail-biter, a notch above Clouzot's other masterpiece 'Les Diaboliques'
  • MovieGeek13
    March 17, 2009
    MovieGeek13
    Better than anything Hitchcock has ever done. This is one film you will be absolutely and positively unable to take your eyes away from. The suspense in this movie will glue you to the screen for it's entire two and a half hour runtime.
  • flixsterman
    January 15, 2009
    flixsterman
    Fantastically exhausting to watch. Said by some to be anti-American in spirit but I, as an American, didn't find it the least bit offensive.
  • rubystevens
    August 1, 2008
    rubystevens
    the brutal story of down on their luck foreigners taking on a suicide mission in south america. the first section reminds me of treasure of the sierra madre. it takes a while to get going while building up the oddball characters but then, look out! i bit all my nails off. i t...( read more)hought i would have a heart attack. unfuckingbelievable. not so much anti american as anti big oil, right? i wanna check out friedkin's remake now
  • somebody421
    November 12, 2009
    somebody421
    The viewer gets to tag along for a pulse-pounding truck ride where the drivers are as unstable as their nitroglycerine cargo. What can I say? Wow.
  • JasonDennis91786
    October 25, 2009
    JasonDennis91786
    This guy was apparently the French Hitchcock, and I've always wondered why everyone gives that guy a handie all the time. Yeah, it's somewhat tense, like all of Hitchcock's movies, and like all of Hitchcock's movies, it's not that tense. And like Hitchcock's movies, it's extremel...( read more)y dated and cliche-ridden with some interesting camera angles and a tacky score. Every twist was predictable, and one of them, perhaps the most important one (besides the classic ending), was completely glossed over. There were some things going for it, especially if you view the journey as emblematic of life in general. Also, it has some gritty detail permissible in European films and not in American ones. But on the whole, this is, blasphemous as it is to say to most people, only as good as your average Hitchcock. That is probably 5 stars to most people, but to me, that is merely good, not great.
  • ElCochran90
    October 17, 2009
    ElCochran90
    - "¡Ta-ralá-lararára! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Ta-ralá-lararára! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Ta-ralá-lararára! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Ta-ralá-lararára! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Ta-ralá-lararára! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡D...( read more)os para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer! ¡Dos para comer!"
    - Bueno, ¿qué?
    - El señor está servido.

    LE SALAIRE DE LA PEUR (1953)


    Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
    País: France / Italy
    Genre: Drama / Thriller
    Length: 148 minutes

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    Le Salaire de la Peur is one of the most extraordinary cinematic masterpieces of suspense ever produced. Henri-Georges Clouzot directs the best movie of his entire filmography, being this the only time he decided to try the thriller genre in such a unique way. Le Salaire de la Peur does not only have a very unusual plot, but the way in which it was written and directed made of this film one of the most influential jewels within the suspense genre, which would cause itself to be referenced and even remade several times by different directors, being Sorcerer (1977) by William Friedkin the most famous example. A less famous American version was also made and released in 1958 under the title of Violent Road, directed by Howard W. Koch. It is a fact that none of its new versions reached the spectacularity that the original Le Salaire de la Peur achieved, which is a loyal representation not only of the South American life conditions, but also of the principal motivations of the human being that is partially abandoned by destiny when certain life circumstances locate him in a particularly difficult financial (and even spiritual) situation. Unlike the suspense he normally portrayed in films such as Les Diaboliques (1955), which is linked in some notorious and influential way to the horror genre, Le Salaire de la Peur creates even a wonderful narrative structure.

    The movie tells the extraordinary and original story of a group of four men of different nationalities that, after a serious accident at an oil field left several victims as an aftermath and oil well fire, voluntarily accept a job consisting in transporting a considerable amount of nitroglycerine without the proper equipment from a remote South American village to the oil field trough the jungle in order to extinguish the fire, so they are hired by the SOC (Southern Oil Company). However, what seemed to be a merely complicated and risky mission turns into a strong rivalry between the two pairs of hired men that travel in two different insecure trucks. This was the first film in the history of cinema that won the BAFTA Film Award of England, the Golden Bear in the Berlin International Film Festival and the Golden Palm in the Cannes Film Festival.

    I dare to say that this is the most ambitious Project and the most complicated direction that Clouzot has ever done. Despite the fact that it seems a simple story, it is not. It is a story about human fortitude tragically contrasted by the irony of fate. Likewise, it is extremely realistic, an aspect that considerably attracted my attention and added a lot of quality. Something curious and very characteristic about classic French cinema is the marvelous style of direction and the high emphasis that somesequences put to every single detail and object involved, such as the classic and very-well known example of the 20-minute-long heist scene in the film directed by Jules Dassin called Du Rififi Chez les Hommes (1955). One possibility is that worldwide cinema, especially French cinema, had been directly influenced by the highly tense and prolonged sequences that Le Salaire de la Peur contains. In fact, in one scene in particular, both trucks must maintain a speed that exceeds the 40 miles per hour for a period of time, a concept that would be completely adopted 41 years later by the film Speed.

    My favorite technical aspect in any feature-film is definitely the cinematography, and Le Salaire de la Peur triumphs one more time thanks to the outstanding work of Armand Thirard. Each shot is spectacularly achieved, not only capturing each detail of the local spots found inside a South American village near the Venezuelan border, but also of the vast mountainous landscapes through which the characters have to travel. This film had the advantage of having some fantastic filming locations, without mentioning that the film was entirely shot in the south on France. The adaptation made by Clouzot in collaboration with Jérôme Géronimi from the novel written by Georges Arnaud is pretty much decent, decent enough to give life to such an intense story. An aspect that also added a lot of credibility to the general atmosphere is the variety of languages spoken throughout the film. Since we are talking about a French-Italian coproduction, since the film supposedly takes place in South America and the SOC is an American business, we can find several languages such as French, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian and English, which certainly conformed a rather difficult challenge for the leading actors, who very appropriately knew how to handle different talking forms in a comprehensible way, being the accents they used a negative aspect of literally null relevance.

    Great actor Yves Montand and Charles Vanel are the stars of the story not only because of being the main characters, but because of their brilliant performances. They clearly are capable of representing the fervent desire of physically and emotionally escaping from a place that does not totally correspond to them due to the total number of real and imaginary existent limitations in the surrounding environment in which they can be found, the desperation, the blindness of the soul caused by the ridiculous feeling of immortality and manliness, and the tough transition between the human inspiration and the birth of cowardice, once that all ambition are suddenly clouded with little samples of panic caused by the attempt of living in a realistic world.

    The main reasons why I consider Le Salaire de la Peur a unique and memorable masterwork is because of its heavy influence within the genre for many contemporary filmmakers around the world, the way it is filmed and the sudden change of atmosphere that it acquires. Whereas the first half of the film focuses on the explanation of the plot and the development of the characters, the second half of effectively creating slow and non-tedious suspense and occasional action, concluding with a point of view of extreme symbolic irony. The screenplay suffers a transcendental change of emphasis when it goes from the first half to the second one; however, it never loses its quality, creating one of the tensest original French jewels ever conceived.

    Although Le Salaire de la Peur is a film partially oriented to action, it stands out from classic and modern films in every single aspect. I never imagined that people from different nationalities reunited in one very characteristic place would be capable of giving so much life to it, cinematically speaking, thanks to a masterly direction. Distinguishingly approximating towards the period of the French New Wave when it had most splendor, Le Salaire de la Peur redefines the way of creating action and suspense through a believable and interesting plot, a quality screenplay, realistic sequences and top-notch performances.

    100/100
  • marylanenalyram
    August 6, 2009
    marylanenalyram
    Aside from a rushed almost asking for it kind of ending very great use of what is real to make fiction. Super dirt. Super poor. and doki doki throughout final hour and forty minutes.
  • WitchfulThinking
    May 17, 2009
    WitchfulThinking
    Nitroglycerin conducteurs, les fuites de dynamite, et l'effondrement des ponts suspendus de l'Amérique du Sud

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Critic Reviews

January 1, 2000
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

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

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