The Wages of Fear (1953)

Original title

Le Salaire de la peur

Directed by

Henri-Georges Clouzot

Genre

drama film, adventure film

Country

France, Italy

Runtime

2h 28m

Rated

PG-13

Rating

8.0 of 10 from 1,108 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Four desperate men in a South American village take a job driving trucks loaded with nitroglycerin over rough mountain roads to reach an oil well fire. The mission depends on their nerves and luck as any wrong move could cause an explosion.

tensesuspensefulbleakgrittyslow-burncliplessanxiety-inducingmoody

What happens

The Wages of Fear (French: Le Salaire de la peur) is a 1953 thriller film directed, co-written, and co-produced by Henri-Georges Clouzot, adapted from Georges Arnaud's 1950 novel of the same name, and starring Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter van Eyck and Véra Clouzot. The film centres on a group of four down-on-their-luck European men who are hired by an American oil company to drive two trucks, loaded with nitroglycerin needed to extinguish an oil well fire, over mountain dirt roads. The film brought Clouzot international fame—winning both the Golden Bear and the Palme d'Or at the 1953 Berlin Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival, respectively—and enabled him to direct Les Diaboliques (1955). In France, it was the fourth highest-grossing film of the year with a total of nearly 7 million admissions. Retrospective reviews have also been highly positive, in 2019, the film was ranked No. 9 in Empire's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

More like this

• I Vitelloni (1953)
• Alarm in Morocco (1953)
• The Wise Guys (1965)
• Lawless Mountain (1953)
• Violent Road (1958)
• The Road to Damascus (1953)
• Blowing Wild (1953)
• The Slave (1953)