- There aren't too many perfect films out there, but Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear is one of them. When I rented it, I was skeptical that a two-and-a-half hour film organized around truck driving would be compelling. Believe me, it is. The story is simple: four men are hired to drive two trucks loaded full of nitroglycerin through the rugged and mountainous terrain of an unnamed South American country. Somehow, that journey proves even more difficult and suspenseful than it sounds. Want to guess how many of them make it back alive?
- You might reasonably ask why anyone would ever undertake such a mission. The answer is money, pure and simple. The town these people are living in reminded me of Tampico from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Plenty of able-bodied men, but little honest work. The only ones who seem to make a decent living are the American oil workers who labor under the supervision of a callous man named Bill O'Brien (William Tubbs). But one of O'Brien's oil derricks has catastrophically ignited, and only explosives can extinguish the fire. Time to hire a few of the town's many desperate drivers for what will certainly be the riskiest job of their lives. As O'Brien notes, "If they blow up, nobody'll come around bothering me for any contribution."
- The most compelling volunteer is Mario (Yves Montand), a real swaggerer whose driving skills far outweigh his sense, especially when it comes to choosing his friends. Instead of spending time with his affectionate girlfriend Linda (Vera Clouzot) or his redoubtable roommate and fellow driver Luigi (Folco Lulli), both of whom obviously love the man, Mario instead takes up with an interloper named Jo (Charles Vanel). Jo is quite obviously the seediest of the drivers, especially considering the manner in which he substituted for a man who mysteriously went missing at the last minute. Rounding out the crew of four is the stalwart Bimba (Peter van Eyck), whose unflappable attitude has a surprisingly sympathetic origin.
- Even as the men are leaving town, it's obvious that this is going to be a rough ride. Nobody explicitly states why the two trucks are scheduled to depart at two different times, but surely the drivers must know. Every bump along that winding and unkept road spells potential doom, and Clouzou never hesitates to show a pothole when he has the chance. As the journey progresses, things go from bad to worse. A switchback nearly causes one of the trucks to tumble down the mountainside. A boulder blocks the road and must be completely obliterated. The entire proceedings seem to have been filmed in the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock's famous theory about a "bomb under the table." I won't tell you that there aren't any explosions, but I will admit that the manner in which any such explosions are portrayed is probably not what you're expecting.
- But the real story here is how these four men deal with their plight. The most startling transformation is that of Jo, who is quickly reduced from a bullying braggart to a useless bundle of nerves. "I've died 50 times since last night," he admits, with an anxiousness that is likely to resonate with similar feelings in the film's audience. Mario, on the other hand, seems to have learned a lesson about friendship from this experience, even if it isn't clear that he'll live long enough to put that lesson to any good use. Without giving too much away, I can tell you that only one truck makes it to the fire, which is as believable an oil inferno as I've ever seen. As that same truck returns down the mountain, a contemplative filmgoer may begin to wonder just how cynical the filmmakers really are. The answer to that, much like the rest of the film, is something you just have to see for yourself.
