The Wages of Fear (1953)

 Henri-Georges Clouzot's "The Wages of Fear"

After Henri-Georges Clouzot was finally out of director jail after his controversial 1943 film "Le Corbeau," he went on the make a string of hits in the 1950s. One of them, 1953's "The Wages of Fear" would be his most commercially viable film to date. The film centers on four down-on-their-luck European men who are hired by an American oil company to drive two trucks over mountain dirt roads, loaded with nitroglycerin needed to extinguish an oil well fire. The film was noted for being incredibly tense and received global acclaim. 

Upon watching the film, I noticed that the temperament emanating from the film was without a doubt cold war anxieties. For one thing, the threat of complete annihilation of all of the characters is ever-present, giving you the same feeling of sudden nuclear Armageddon. Because of this, the film is fueled by tension and edge-of-your-seat anxiety. On top of this, it demonstrates the dominance of the American economic and political structure during the time. While other countries were financially downtrodden from the fallout of the war, American was prospering off of resource allocation. In the film, they are taking advantage of the oil in South America and the Europeans are having to risk their neck to cover up for the Americans' carelessness. The film was a perfect representation of the social and political temperament in the 1950s across the globe. 

Clouzot had already made a film about a national temperament under Nazi occupation, 1943's "Le Corbeau." It was a film infused with Salem witch-hunt style paranoia that emulated the anxieties of France under Nazi occupation at the time. This time around, Clouzot once again captures the 1950s nuclear anxiety with "The Wages of Fear." At no point ever in the film are you even thinking about nuclear fallout, but the tone of this anxiety is present in this Georges Arnaud adaptation. 

The film was such a success, it won both the Golden Bear and the Palme d'Or at the 1953 Berlin Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival, respectively. In France, it sold over 7 million tickets, making it the fourth highest grossing film that year. The film also had the ability to strip away some of the United Kingdoms rejection of subtitled films. Many British audience members flocked to the film, which allowed the U.K. to continue admitting foreign-made films into its national market. Overall, "The Wages of Fear" was an international success for Clouzot and allowed him the creative freedom to make his follow-up....1955's "Diabolique."