Kinematoscope

Today we check back in with Henri-Georges Clouzot, with 1953's The Wages Of Fear (Le Salaire de la peur).

Having no exposure, all I can tell you is that it's French, it's black and white, and his wife is probably in it again. And it'll probably be tense. Really, really tense.

The Key Players:

Clouzout we know, as well as his beautiful wife Véra (who plays a supporting role here).

But the whole film is sort of a family affair, as star Yves Montand, veteran French singer and actor, was married to Les diaboliques star Simone Signoret at the time- Charles Vanel played the inspector in that film as well, the same year he put in a supporting turn in To Catch A Thief.

Folco Lulli (The Organizer) and Peter Van Eyck (The Spy Who Came In From The Cold) round out the main cast.



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The Story:

In a South American town isolated by the desert, the local economy and law enforcement is all run by the American 'Southern Oil Company,' which is there to drill. After an oil well catches fire, the only way to extinguish the blaze is to blow it out with a whole lot of nitroglycerin. The only way to get it there is to drive a truckful of the unstable, highly sensitive explosive over rough terrain.

SOC, already adept at exploiting the locals for cheap labor, decides to hire the job out to the masses stranded in town with no way to pay the fare home, and they offer high wages for the job to attract lots of vounteers. After many trials and selection processes, they pick four men who coincidentally are our four main characters:

Mario (Montand): a French drifter, playboy, and douchebag (at least to his girlfriend, Linda (Mrs. Clouzot)).

Jo (Vanel): an aging, prideful gangster new to town that strikes up a friendship with Mario- this causes a falling out between Mario and...

Luigi (Lulli): (Mario and Luigi! I JUST REALIZED THIS!) a hard-working, penny-pinching Italian who needs to get out of his job mixing cement before inhaling the dust kills him.

Bimba (Van Eyck): an intense Dutchman that survived the Nazi regime after being forced to work in a salt mine.

Actually Jo is a last minute replacement for a man named Smerloff that doesn't show- did Jo murder him? It's left unclear. Mario and Jo set out in one truck, Luigi and Bimba in the other.

For the next hour and a half, they try and navigate cracks in the road, detonate a boulder blocking the way, a rickety bridge, and psychological breakdowns (namely Jo, whose nerve is nowhere near what it used to be) to their destination despite the possibility of exploding at any moment.

The Artistry:

Is there a stronger word for 'harrowing'? Chilling? Agonizing? Nerve-racking? The extended second half of The Wages Of Fear is all of these things.

Split the credit for the tension between the nitroglycerin itself and the steady time the film takes to buildup these characters before they set out- Luigi, a man of the people, and Jo, a wannabe bigshot, nearly brawling at the bar, the riotus townsfolk when the accident in question kills 13 local sons (but no SOC employees).

That idea of the town itself as a powder keg never really pays off, but it lays a solid thematic foundation of oppression. In fact, I admired how stark the film turned out to be- the cartoonish villainy of the SOC brass is never met with any retribution, Mario is at times a slimeball, other times a brute, and never really redeemed.

The cinematography is wonderfully claustrophobic, particularly for what's basically a road movie. The closeups in the trucks (labeled EXPLOSIVE in big letters, the oil fire framed by a doorway- even the cramped porch as the vagrants sit out the heat at the cantina. It helps that two thirds of the trucks sequences take place at night, with lights illuminating only the determined faces of our heroes.

If heroes you can call them: certainly Luigi and Bimba are easy to root for- Van Eyck is the most memorable performance of the four, slowing revealing a jovial personality under a battle-hardened exterior. He shoulders one of the most intense moments, when he slowly, carefully pours a little of the nitro into a hole carved in the boulder in order to blow it up.

One character who takes his name out of contention for the job right away makes a comparison: " I used to see men go off on this kind of jobs... and not come back. When they did, they were wrecks. Their hair had turned white and their hands were shaking like palsy!" This journey is like growing old, all at once. But in the promise of something better, we see four men choose it willfully to leave the hellish township behind, beaten down by heat and watchful tormentors in the SOC. But if life is the journey, through obstacle, tension, and especially fear, the only reward is untimely death or deliverance to hell: a flaming, chaotic oil field, greed wrought upon the landscape.

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

After making it successfully past the bumpy road (where they have to maintain 40 mph, Speed style to keep level over the bumps and not jostle the payload), the rickety bridge, and the boulder, Luigi and Bimba's truck explodes for no reason at all. Aw.

Jo finally snaps and flees, but Mario catches up to him and beats him into submission in an uncomfortable confrontation. They encounter a sinkhole filling with leaking oil, and Jo gets out to steer the truck through- he trips, and Mario (unwilling to stop and have the truck be stuck with no momentum to carry it out) runs over his leg. On the final trip to the oil derrick, Jo dies while reminscing about his time in Paris.

Mario is greeted as a hero by the frantic workers, but collapses in exhaustion and despair. The next day, seemingly jovial, he starts back to town in the now empty truck- we see Linda and the townsfolk jubilantly start to waltz to "The Blue Danube" on the radio as Mario, smiling, dangerously swerves the truck side to side on the road for no reason, immune to the risk.

He of course careens off a mountain road, and dies as the trucks broken warning siren wails a distorted finale tone. The end.

END SPOILERS


Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

Wow, it was a bummer, but I'd put it up there- I certainly enjoyed it more than Les Diaboliques.

The Legacy:

It was remade twice for Americans, as Violent Road and Sorcerer (directed by our pal William Friedkin). It would win the Golden Bear in Berlin, the Palm d'Or in Cannes, and the BAFTA for Best film despite being ignored by the Academy.

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

Not a single damn one. But here's Yves Montand singing "Les Feuilles Mortes." Culture!



Leftover Thoughts:

-Remeber that one episode of LOST where Arzt blew up? That was hilarious, and nitroglycerin will always remind me of it now.

-Truly a multilingual film, with Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, and English all flying around in there.


Coming Up...

167. Ratatouille

166. Dog Day Afternoon

165. The Secret In Their Eyes

Today we take a look at a 1955 French film that I've actually seen before- thanks, film studies minor!

Les Diaboliques, or The Devils, is part thriller, part light horror, with a dash of huge shocking twist.

The Key Players:

Director Henri-Georges Clouzot was a Frenchman most famous for The Wages Of Fear (coming up rather soon on the countdown itself) and the documentary The Mystery Of Picasso. He never bridged the Atlantic to work in Hollywood, though several of his films have become remake fodder, including this one.

Simone Signoret was one France's greatest actresses, becoming the first French person of either gender to win an Academy Award for Room At The Top

The director's wife Véra Clouzot co-stars, in one her scant three film roles, all directed by Henri-Georges.

And Paul Merisse also puts in the most famous role of his long career- he also starred in Clouzot's La vérité.



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The Story:

Our plot is pretty simple: Merisse is a cruel, domineering schoolmaster- Clouzot is his wife, and English teacher with a heart condition that actually owns the school, and Signoret plays his mistress, another teacher.

You'd think they might not care for one another, but Signoret and Clouzot have become friends by mutual hatred of Merisse's brutish ways- they hatch and successfully execute a plot to drug him and drown him in the bathtub.

There are a few tense moments as they move the body in a wicker trunk, but they manage to dump in the school's pool without being seen- this way it will appear he drowned while swimming. Open and shut, right?

Nope- the body seems to have sunk, and doesn't float to the surface for a few days. Signoret arranges to have the pool drained by "accidentally" dropping her keys in there, but the body's missing. Soon Merisse's suit is delivered back to his wife, freshly dry-cleaned, and a student claims the headmaster appeared to punish him for using a slingshot.

A body is found in the river, but when Clouzot goes to the morgue it's not her husband- and a retired police detective takes a freelance interest in her case.

The Artistry:

You really have to stay to the end of Les Diaboliques to know why it's set apart from the countless other 50s thrillers that are clearly Hitchcockian in origin and influence.

The acting is unremarkable, with Signoret's cold conniving and Mrs. Clouzot's conscience-ridden overacting the best and worst parts.

It's paced slowly, and stolidly, and until the big reveal you might wonder why they couldn't whittle it down to an hour for an episode of "Hitchcock Presents."

But then...

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

The increasingly frail Clouzot is ordered to rest in bed, and tells Signoret it's best if they part- both are suitably freaked now that all rumors point to a ghost coming to haunt them.

Clouzot wakes to the inspector at her bedside, with his own tidings of her live and well husband- she tells him what happened, hoping that penance for her crime will stay the ghost's ire, perhaps. He assures her she'll wake up acquitted, for some reason, and sets off to investigate further on the schoolgrounds.

Then in the film's best sequence, Clouzot sees lights in her husband's office through the window, and nervously creeps down a dark hallway to find his name typed over and over on a paper in the typewriter- then the lights go out suddenly and she runs back to the bathroom, struggling to breath.

And who should be in the tub but Merisse, his hair matted and his eyes rolled back- he stands and silently points at Clouzot as she holds her chest, chokes, and dies of fright, her heart finally given out.

After a beat, Merisse removes the large false irises from his eyes, and lets Signoret in the room- it was all a plot! Now Merisse is rich, and can live with Signoret in the open. What struck me most here is the way the film portrayed Clouzot is wide-eyed and innocent, and then had the two schemers describe with total vitriol here- as in, "now that bitch will finally leave us alone" and so forth.

Of course, crime doesn't pay, and the one-step-too-late inspector steps out of the shadows just as they think they're home free.

The next day, as everyone packs to leave, the same kid that say the "dead" schoolmaster claims that Clouzot appeared to give him his slingshot back, and told him to cause mischief.

The film ends with a title card imploring the audience not to ruin the ending for other film-goers, an early anti-spoiler message.

END SPOILERS


Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

Perhaps a little lower- it's hard to say. Les Diaboliques is certainly well-made, and the big reveal was great fun the first time I saw it, but overall rewatchability is a pretty big factor for me. Did I really feel the need to watch this again? No, but I did anyway, and that made it seem a little perfunctory. (Note: Dave told me in an email this morning that it's an "awesome film. I think it is spectacular. The mood, the twists, etc." So perhaps he will rebut this in the comments)

The Legacy:

It was remade for American audiences in 1996, with Sharon Stone in the mistress role and Chazz Palminteri unbelievably cast as a guy who scored two chicks at once.

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

Hey, it's the end! Lots of spoilers, naturally.



Leftover Thoughts:

-In a sad parallel, Véra Clouzot would die of a heart attack at age 46.


Coming Up...

177. Grave Of The Fireflies

176. The Gold Rush

175. Casino