Product Description

In a squalid South American oil town, four desperate men sign on for a suicide mission to drive trucks loaded with nitroglycerin over a treacherous mountain route. As they ferry their expensive cargo to a faraway oil fire, each bump and jolt tests their courage, their friendship, and their nerves. The Wages of Fear (Le salaire de la peur) is one of the greatest thrillers ever committed to celluloid, a white-knuckle ride from France s legendary master of suspense Henri Georges-Clouzot.

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
Restored high-definition digital transfer with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Video interviews with assistant director Michel Romanoff and Henri-Georges Clouzot biographer Marc Godin
Interview with Yves Montand from 1988
Henri-Georges Clouzot: The Enlightened Tyrant, a 2004 documentary on the director s career
Censored, an analysis of cuts made to the film for its 1955 U.S. release
PLUS: An booklet featuring an essay by novelist Dennis Lehane

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2213 in DVD
• Brand: IMAGE ENT.
• Released on: 2009-04-21
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 148 minutes

Features

• In a squalid South American oil town, four desperate men sign on for a suicide mission to drive trucks loaded with nitroglycerin over a treacherous mountain route. As they ferry their expensive cargo to a faraway oil fire, each bump and jolt tests their courage, their friendship, and their nerves. The Wages of Fear (Le salaire de la peur) is one of the greatest thrillers ever committed to celluloi

Review
A big, masterly movie...it joyfully scares the living hell out of you as it reveals something about the human condition. --Vincent Canby, The New York Times

Customer Reviews

Well, the most suspenseful film I have ever seen
There are two things often said about this film that I would like to strongly agree with: first, it begins rather slowly, and second, it really is one of, if not THE, most suspenseful films ever made.
The first third of the movie moves inexplicably slowly. I can understand many of the reasons why: the attempt to define the characters, to show their interactions with one another, to depict the quiet desperation of their lives to make it plausible that four men would undertake such an astonishingly dangerous job as hauling nitroglycerin over treacherous jungle and mountain dirt roads. Even granting all that, however, the start is by any standard really, really slow. And I suspect that of the people you encounter who proclaim the film a bore either gave up before getting to the good parts or never recovered from the slow start.

The most suspenseful film ever made? Some people assert that the film has been so overhyped along these lines that it would be impossible for any film to come up to one's expectations. There are two edges to this sword. I am far more impressed that despite being hyped as the most suspenseful film ever made, I was nonetheless utterly on the edge of my seat for most of the final 100 minutes. And if some of the scenes seem somewhat familiar, it is undoubtedly because of the score of films that have plundered this film for their own tension-filled scenes.

I have often thought that Yves Montand was, at his best, one of the more compelling performers of the last half of the twentieth century. He wasn't consistently successful internationally. Sometimes one or two decades would come between some of his greatest triumphs. To illustrate, I think Montand's two greatest film appearances were THE WAGES OF FEAR (1953) and JEAN DE FLORETTE/MANON OF THE SPRING (1986), only thirty-three years apart.

Many viewers are not comfortable with the very ending of the movie and I I have to agree somewhat. Nihilism was very fashionable in the early 1950s in European cinema. The ending, which seems completely unnecessary and not organically connected with the rest of the film, reflects less any inner necessity for a downer ending than the general mood in "serious" films at the time. So, in a sense, one could argue that this movie manages to be one of the great classics of cinema despite a slow beginning and an arbitrarily negativistic ending. Where the film shines is in the utterly riveting journey through the jungle and mountains.

VISCERAL THRILLER IN BLU-RAY -- A MASTERPIECE OF WORLD CINEMA
Iconic, vintage masterpiece in brilliant new transfer.

Criterion's restored hi-def transfer of Henri-Georges Clouzot's controversial, visceral and prescient thriller still grabs the viewer by the throat for a breathless, nihilistic ride.

This legendary film of suspense and despair was deemed "evil" by Time magazine during its 1955 US release. Based on the harrowing 1950 book by George Arnaud, it's a cautionary tale of the true blood-toll of oil and greed.

Filmed in 1951 and first shown in France in 1952, "The Wages of fear" (Le Salaire de la peur) is about four European men at the end of their ropes. In a hell-hole of a South American village, these desperate men accept a job from an American oil company to drive two trucks of unstable nitroglycerine along a treacherous mountain route to an oil fire.

Clouzot, who made less than a dozen films including the acclaimed "Les Diaboliques" and "Quai des orfevres" never flinches from his vision. Although the first half may seem a bit unfocused and meandering it is not because we get to know our characters, the squalid S.A. setting and the uncaring, greed-driven, business-as-usual of the American oil company. The movie literally jump starts when the four hapless men hit the road in their two trucks overloaded with nitro. We understand these men and we ride with them and their emotions. Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter van Eyck and Antonio Centa are terrific as the frantic, fraught drivers.

There's a lot of post WW II existential angst in this tale and that's not surprising. After all, it is French and the ideas of Camus and Sartre permeate this film as they did the decade in which it was produced.

My only memory of this film was a washed out video tape copy with impossible to read subtitles and later a faded 16mm print in film school.

I've watched this Blu-ray version several times now and it is stunning. It looks like a print that just came from the lab. The black and white is crisp, with a wonderful range of grays -- velvety shadows to burnished silver. And the subtitles are always easy to read and perfectly synched to the spoken French. But more important, the rhythm and meaning of the spare dialogue remains.

This gritty film, devoid of sentimentality, follows men who live in fear. They know death is coming and yet continue with the task at hand until the end. Although my personal philosophy is not that of the drivers, it reminded me to relish the precious moments of life and to live it fully, bravely and in the moment.

This is one in the rather small handful of the greatest films in world cinema. It has never looked better. And it asks questions that are relevant today: How desperate are we in our need for oil? And what is the final price? Highest recommendation.

Superior extras include:
Interviews with assistant director Michel Romanoff, Clouzot biographer Marc Godlin and Yves Montand from 1988). A great documentary on Clouzot's career "The Enlightened Tyrant." "CENSORED," a revealing look at the cuts made for the initial 1955 U.S. release. And "No Exit," an insightful booklet/essay by novelist Dennis Lehane.

Nerve-wracking and magnificent, and the anti-American oil stuff now just seems quaint
The Wages of Fear is a magnificent thriller, the last hour-and-a-half of which will have you chewing your nails up to your wrists. The first hour is interesting but, to my mind, slow. We spend a lot of time getting to know the squalor of Las Piedras and the anti-American point of view now just seems quaint.

Las Piedras is a tiny South American (or possibly Central American) town that reeks of poverty and bakes in the hot sun. Children with sores, tired donkeys and mangy dogs fill the dirt streets. It's the final stop for down-and-outers whose only hope is to find work with the Southern Oil Company (you can infer SOC easily is a stand-in for Standard Oil), which dominates the place. "Americans here? You kidding?" says one man. "If there's oil around they're not far behind," says his companion. SOC has a headquarters office in Las Piedras; the oil field is 300 miles away. Into this fly-infested hole arrives Jo (Charles Vanel), a tough, middle-aged French gangster out of luck and out of cash. He encounters Mario (Yves Montand), a ne'er-do-well in his twenties from Corsica who's stuck in Las Piedras. Mario does odd jobs to make enough money for meals and whiskey. He beds and takes for granted the young woman who works at the town's cantina, and longs to get out of the place and back to Paris. The two of them bond in a way, the confident tough guy and the young, not-quite-amoral thug-in-training. The shifting relationship between these two is what drives the story. That they can get blown sky high at any moment after the first hour is what keeps us watching.

When an oil fire erupts at a well head, Bill O'Brien (William Tubbs), the local American SOC boss, decides to send containers of nitroglycerine in two trucks from Las Piedras over three hundred miles of rocky, pot-holed road to put out the fire. He'll hire two men per truck and pay $2,000 per man for those who get through. The one drawback is that nitro is notoriously unstable. It will explode in heat and if jostled, and the trucks have no safety equipment. The visa-less bums, last chancers and sweating drunks stuck in Las Piedras line up. These are men who are so close to being the dregs of humanity you won't want to spend time standing next to them down wind. You're not going to hire those tramps, one of O'Brien's subordinates says to him. O'Brien makes clear the film's point of view regarding American oil companies. "Those bums," he says, "don't have a union or any families, and if they blow up no one will come around for contributions." And so fifty-six minutes into the movie, Jo and Mario in one truck and Bimba (Peter van Eyck), a blond German, and Luigi (Folco Lulli), a happy Italian dying of lung disease from working in the SOC's cement operation, set off in their trucks. Even they begin to have second thoughts when they watch how slowly and carefully the jerrycans of nitro are loaded.

From now on we're in the cabs of those two trucks, sweating with the heat and our nerves. The road cuts through baking semi-desert, filled with potholes and rocks, and over mountains covered with scrub, shale and boulders. We've got to get through the washboard, a long stretch of dusty road carved into ruts by the wind. If the trucks keep going at 40 miles an hour, all is fine. Go under 40, "boom." Go over and "boom." There's a hairpin turn high on a mountain so sharp the trucks have to back onto a wooden platform to turn around. We find out the wood is rotten and the platform is shaky. There's a boulder as big as a truck that will have to be blasted apart...but only by using some of the nitro in a hazardous improvisation that requires siphoning, a falling hammer and a lit fuse. And worst of all is a large, expanding and deep pool of oil which will have to be driven through. By now we've come to know, if not especially like, these four men. Luigi is strong, coarse and relatively happy. Bimba is resourceful but fatalistic enough to make you nervous. Jo? He turns out not to be so tough after all, while Mario becomes the senior partner of the two, and determined enough to run a truck over a man's leg. How many survive? You'll need to see the movie. The ending is just right.

Considering the passion French intellectuals have always had for smoking their Gauloises and condemning what they term American cultural and economic imperialism, Henri-Georges Clouzot makes his points but never at the expense of his film. The first hour may have messages to give, but they're understated and never smack anyone over the head. (However, the movie was cut by nearly an hour for it's initial American release. In addition to losing a fair amount of time in Las Piedras, all those anti-American swipes somehow disappeared.) The journey on the two trucks is so continuously gripping that any messages early on fall to the side of the road. Yves Montand, in one of his earliest movies, and Charles Vanel, an old hand, dominate The Wages of Fear. For those who recall Vanel only as the wily, good-humored police inspector in Clouzot's Diabolique or the avuncular manager of the restaurant in To Catch a Thief, you're in for a master-class in the versatility of a first-class actor.

The Wages of Fear is a classic, powerful adventure of men placed at risk by their needs and their natures.