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Features: DVD, Special Edition, French, Subtitled
In the squalid, impoverished South American town of Las Piedras, desperate men and women from all over the world scrape out a living and dream of escape, under the watchful eye of the ruling Southern Oil Company. When a well explodes 300 miles away, the American company conscripts four of these unfortunates to drive trucks loaded with volatile nitroglycerin through treacherous mountains, a suicide mission that is their only way out. With The Wages of Fear, legendary director Henri-Georges Clouzot created one of the greatest thrillers ever committed to celluloid--an epic portrait of courage and cowardice, bursting with white-knuckle suspense and raw emotion. The DVD features a new, restored high-definition digital transfer, new interviews with Clouzot's biographer and assistant director, the trailer, and more.
Editor's Note
Made two years before his slightly better known DIABOLIQUE, Henri-Georges Clouzot's nail-biter of a suspense film is the story of four broke and desperate men stranded in Latin America. Eager for a way out of their respective situations, they accept an American oil company's impossibly dangerous offer to transport two truckloads of nitroglycerin across hazardous jungle terrain. Remade by William Friedkin as SORCERER in 1977.
Plot Summary
Henri Georges Clouzot directed this tense and suspenseful drama about four men so desperate for freedom that they willingly risk their lives to deliver a dangerous cargo.|In a small, isolated, hot and dusty Central American village, there's only one thing to do: dream of getting out. An opportunity for escape presents itself -- but only to those with nerves of steel. An American oil company has offered to pay big bucks to get two trucks filled with nitroglycerin over to a well fire. The catch: the unpaved terrain contains enough bumps and crags to make the unstable material explode... and instantly kill the driver. Nonetheless, the company has many applicants hungry for work, and a quartet of the coolest are chosen. But even these stalwart men will discover that fear of their deadly payload can ignite even the most frozen emotions.
| Features | A New Essay By Novelist Dennis Lehane | | Archival Interview With Yves Montand, On Working With Clouzot | | Audio: French Mono | | New And Improved English Subtitle Translation | | New Interview With Assistant Director Michel Romanoff | | New Interview With Henri-Georges Clouzot Biographer Marc Godin | | New, Restored High-Definition Digital Transfer | | Scene Selection | | Subtitles: English | | Theatrical Trailer |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Image |
| Release Date: 10/25/2005 |
| Running Time: 147 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 1952 | | Catalog ID: 110 | | UPC: 00037429203224 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: French | | Available Audio Tracks: French | | Available Subtitles: English | | Video: B&W |
Aspect Ratio | | Standard 1.33:1 [4:3] |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Cannes Film Festival (1953) |  | Henri-Georges Clouzot, Winner, Grand Prize of the Festival | | Charles Vanel, Winner, Special Mention |
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| | Professional Reviews | New York Times
"...Seldom have the exquisite pain and pleasure of motion-picture suspense been mixed with quite the intoxicating effects that [Clouzot] achieves [here]....Classic..." 10/18/1991 p.C8Entertainment Weekly
Rating: B 01/13/1995 p.67 Chicago Sun-Times
"...The film's extended suspense sequences deserve a place among the great stretches of cinema..." 03/06/1992 p.37 USA Today
"...This original is one of the most exciting movies ever..." 11/05/1991 p.3D Entertainment Weekly
"[I]t's a masterpiece of tension, precision, and a very specific form of masculine desperation." -- Grade: A- 10/21/2005 Premiere
4 stars out of 4 -- "Memorable performances, precise pacing, subtle detail: Now that's thrilling." 12/01/2005 p.190 James Berardinelli's ReelViews 10 of 10
Legendary filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot has often been referred to as the "French Hitchcock." Indeed, Clouzot is best known for his 1955 movie, Diabolique, which is widely regarded as one of the most surprising and disturbing psychological thrillers of all time. (Hitchcock reportedly made Psycho in an attempt to top Diabolique,). Yet, as chilling and effective as Diabolique is, it stands a small notch down from Clouzot's 1953 effort, Wages of Fear. Based on the novel by Georges Arnaud, Wages of Fear is the kind of motion picture for which commonplace phrases like "white-knuckle tension ride" have been coined. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
The film's extended suspense sequences deserve a place among the great stretches of cinema. Four desperate men, broke and stranded in a backwater of Latin America, sign up on a suicidal mission to drive two truckloads of nitroglycerin 300 miles down a hazardous road. They could be blown to pieces at any instant, and in the film's most famous scene Clouzot requires them to turn their trucks around on a rickety, half-finished timber platform high above a mountain gorge. - Roger Ebert
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