Las Piedras is a small town in South America. The town is home to a rag tag batch of expatriates who have no jobs, no money and no prospects. They do odd jobs occasionally to get by but don’t have enough to actually leave the town. In addition, there is an indigenous population as well as white Americans transported in to work in oilfields owned by the American Southern Oil Company. The oil company has a compound where the Americans live and work but don’t have to associate with the town’s people. For the extremely dangerous jobs, the company exploits the locals.
Among the expatriates is a Frenchman named Mario Livi (Yves Montand), an Italian named Luigi (Folco Lulli) and a German, Bimba (Peter van Eyck). Another Frenchman, Jo (Charles Vanel), arrives and begins a friendship with Mario. Jo is an old gangster who is past his prime but still commands a fair amount of respect. Now further down in ranking he finds himself in exile among the other foreigners to La Piedras. Luigi is a jovial guy and is the only one with a steady job working as a bricklayer. Unfortunately, he is slowly dying of cement lung and is encouraged to quit.
A fire in the oil field results in many people dead or injured. The fire continues to rage. The only way to stop the fire would be to cap it using nitroglycerin. The nitro is housed at the SOC headquarters which is 500 kilometers away from the La Piedras fields. The road between the two is rugged and dangerous at any time but magnified when a highly explosive cargo is aboard. The workers at SOC are union and the work is considered too dangerous. To overcome that obstacle, SOC decides to hire non-union workers from town.
The company foreman is Bill O’Brien (William Tubbs). He gets the company to authorize the hiring of four men from town. A two-man team is assigned to a truck carrying cans full of nitro. There are two trucks in the caravan. The company hires Mario, Bimba, Luigi and Hans Smerloff (Jo Dest). Hans doesn’t show up at the scheduled time, so Jo takes his place. The task is so treacherous that the company will pay $2000 each to successfully make the trip. As they head out, Mario and Jo are in one truck and Bimba and Luigi are in another truck. Not everyone will make it to the finish line.
“The Wages of Fear” AKA “Le salaire de la peur” was released in 1953 and was directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. It is a French and Italian psychological drama and a thriller. The movie is based on the 1950 novel by Georges Arnaud. Several adaptations or remakes of the film were done, in 1958 as “Violent Road”, in 1977 as “Sorcerer” and in 2024 as “The Wages of Fear”. A restoration of the film was done in 2017.
The movie started out rather slow with a lot of character development, then, OMG what a nail biter. It got really intense and was one hardship after another. It is a long movie, about two and a half hours. It may seem to start out slow but the dynamics between the four drivers is important to the grit of the story. It was an excellent movie, gripping and fascinating.
The film itself is not without controversy. In the American markets cuts were done removing any references to the big bad Americans being coldhearted and exploiting the locals. The restoration restored those cuts.
At the time the film was being shot, Vera Clouzot, who plays Linda, was married to Director Clouzot.