Ciné - Club May: Festival de Cannes

Le Salaire de la peur/ The Wages of Fear

Friday, 4 May 2012

5.30 & 8.30 pm

Director : Henri-Georges Clouzot

1953, 148 min

In Las Piedras, a desert village of Central America, where all the “tramps” of the world are reunited, four men are requested for a suicide mission against a 4,000 $ reward: driving two trucks full of nitroglycerin over mountain dirt roads , without the equipment that would make it safe, to extinguish a burning oil well. The manager of the SOC, the American company, which pretty much rules the roost in the impoverished village, chooses Mario, Luigi, Bimba and Jo. They will become four “walking dead men”, in a true hell in movement, where death is awaiting at every turn. Mario, the character played by Yves Montand, may remind us of Albert Camus’ vision of humanity: he is a death row inmate who finds in an insane challenge a reason to move forward and to exist.

The film gives the impression of an end of the world, taking place in an area where only vice and the need for survival prevail.  The precariousness of their situation serves an excruciating suspense. At every moment they can disappear in the explosion of the truck. But contrary to the main part of cinematographic production, the suspense is here provoked by the slowness of the action (indeed the trucks have to be driven very carefully to avoid any bump). The direction of Henri-Georges Clouzot invites the spectator to share the fear of the characters. Seeing The Wages of Fear is really a nerve-wracking experience.

The Wages of Fear won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1953 and Charles Vanel received the Best Actor Award for the role of Jo.

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