Le Salaire de la peur (1953)
Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot

Film Review

Le Salaire de la peur (a.k.a. The Wages of Fear) represents the absolute highpoint in the career of director Henri-Georges Clouzot, an intoxicating mix of film noir-style adventure and road movie that is by far his bleakest work and a masterpiece in the suspense thriller genre. Before he made this film, Clouzot had already acquired a reputation as a fully paid-up cynic with the lowest regard for human nature, through such films as Le Corbeau (1943) and Quai des Orfèvres (1947).  Here, in his darkest exploration of human frailty, he surpasses himself and seems to wallow in the unedifying carnival of misogyny, greed, exploitation and sado-masochism that he conjures up for our amusement.  You can hardly imagine a more viciously misanthropic portrait of humanity than the one that Clouzot paints here, in the cruellest and most pungent tones.  Yet despite its grim subject matter, Le Salaire de la peur is also Clouzot's most compelling film, the one that allowed him to be likened to that other great master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.

Clouzot's motivation for making the film was initially political.  Whilst visiting Brazil on his honeymoon (he had just married Vera Amato, the daughter of the Brazilian ambassador), Clozout was struck by the extent to which the natives of South American countries were exploited and maltreated by American owned petrol companies. By adapting Georges Arnaud's 1950 novel Le Salaire de la peur, he saw an opportunity to make an attack on the kind of rampant capitalist imperialism which allowed the rich countries of the northern hemisphere to economically rape the poorer countries of the south.  At its heart, Clouzot's film is a study in the abuse of power - the cynical behaviour of an oil company which appears to be lacking in scruples of any kind mirrors the fraught relationship between the four central protagonists, whose greed, desperation and macho posturing transforms them into dehumanised brutes, the debased end-product of a flawed economic system.  The film's strident political undertones make it just as relevant today as it was in the early 1950s; depressingly little has changed in the intervening half a century.

It is in the first hour of the film, the languidly paced prelude to the nightmarish road journey, that Clouzot establishes his characters and plots out the trajectory that will drive them to their ineluctable doom.  The dusty shantytown setting serves as a stark metaphor for the spiritual and moral aridity of the protagonists who, driven to the limit of human endurance by self-inflicted misfortune, are prepared to grasp any opportunity, however risky, to escape and find a new life elsewhere.  It is the classic film noir set up - characters trapped in a milieu they desperately want to escape from, but who are destined to fail in their bid for freedom through their own character faults.  Their fate is sealed in the opening shot, where a little boy is seen innocently hanging four beetles.

The two most interesting protagonists are Mario and Jo, the former a young woman-abusing cynic (who seems to be modelled on Clouzot himself), the latter a middle-aged gangster-type whose homosexual leanings are exposed through the ease with which he lures Mario from his girlfriend Linda.  Even before the film is underway, we are confronted with a power struggle - Jo's determination to separate Mario from Linda and his friend Luigi, for reasons which are readily apparent.  Mario's willingness to fall under Jo's spell reveals the former's latent homosexual tendencies, which will later colour the relationship between the two men and take it into some very dark places.  The sexual tension between the four male protagonists will grow to explosive proportions just before the film reaches its dramatic climax.

The creepily homoerotic sequence in which Montand wades into an oil-filled crater to rescue a now crippled Vanel is laden in symbolism.  It is painfully evident that their two characters have arrived at their moral nadir.  Covered in black slime, they no longer even resemble human beings, but appear to have been transformed into mere blobs of primal savagery.  But to say this is the nadir implies that it is also a turning point.   The oil bath represents not only the zenith of moral corruption, it also serves as a kind of renewing baptism, from which Montand's character emerges as a better individual, his newfound humanity revealed in the next scene in which he tries to comfort his dying friend.  Just when you least expect it, Clouzot throws in a note of optimism - mankind may not after all end up drowning in the mire of capitalist greed and self-interest.  Alas, the candle of hope is kicked into the dust within minutes of it being lit, and the film ends as it must, with another dramatic shock.

Clouzot's most ambitious film, Le Salaire de la peur was made on a blockbuster budget of the kind that was exceedingly rare in French cinema at the time.  A series of mishaps, caused mainly by adverse weather conditions, sent the film way over budget and extended the shoot by several months.  Filming began in the Provence location (a convincing substitute for South America) in August 1951 and was not completed until September 1952.  An eight month break in filming came as a result of a tragic accident (in which two members of the crew drowned) and Vera Clouzot falling seriously ill.   Extreme wind and rain storms repeatedly demolished the sets and imposed substantial delays on the filming.  Clouzot and his team may have been justified in thinking that the project was jinxed from the outset.

The casting of Yves Montand in the lead role was a gamble which paid off handsomely.  Better known at the time as a singer than as an actor, Montand had yet to make his break into the movies, despite having appeared in Marcel Carné's Les Portes de la nuit (1946) and opposite his then lover Edith Piaf in Étoile sans lumière (1946).  Montand's interpretation of the brutish Mario shows little if any of the actor's innate charm and humanity and looks like a proto-Steve McQueen, pure machismo driven by the most basic of primal instincts.  It is only in the last twenty minutes of the film that Montand is allowed to humanise his character, and in doing so reveals his true talent as an actor, a talent that other film directors would be eager to exploit.  In a long and distinguished film career he would work with such notable filmmakers as Alain Resnais (La Guerre est finie, 1966), Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Cercle rouge, 1970), Costa-Gravras (L'Aveu, 1970), Claude Sautet (César et Rosalie, 1972) and Jean-Luc Godard (Tout va bien, 1972), whilst also making his mark as a singer and political activist.

Suitably cast opposite the young and virile Montand is the well-worn Charles Vanel, arguably the greatest and most prolific character actor in French cinema, with a career that stretched back as far as 1910.  Surprisingly, Vanel was not the first choice for the role of Jo.  The part was initially offered to Jean Gabin, but he turned it down, fearing that playing a coward would jeopardise his future career.  Almost from the very first shot, where he wanders into town like Charles Bronson looking for a fight, Vanel proves that he is perfect for the role and, assisted by some exceptional screenwriting, he gives one of his finest performances.  It is his harrowing portrayal of a man slowly going to pieces which gives the film its emotional intensity and makes it so excruciatingly suspenseful.  Vanel's Jo is the complete opposite to Montand's character, who blithely plays the role of the Teflon-coated hero as though oblivious to the peril that lurks around every corner.  By contrast, like one of those irritating backseat drivers who sees terror in every pothole and road bump, Vanel's character makes us constantly aware of the danger that the four protagonists are in, makes us anticipate the worst whenever a potentially lethal obstacle presents itself.  Fear is perhaps the hardest emotion for an actor to convey convincingly in front of a camera, but Vanel does it effortlessly and presents us with the gruesome spectacle of a man who, initially so sure of himself, ends up being reduced to a quivering wreck.  Montand and Vanel's arresting performances are well complemented by Peter van Eyck and Folco Lulli, who provide the merest smattering of light relief.  For the part of Linda, Clouzot cast his own wife Vera, who would subsequently appear in two of his later films, Les Diaboliques (1955) and Les Espions (1957).
     
Although it would prove to be a global box office hit, the American release of Le Salaire de la peur was compromised when the film was subjected to forty minutes' worth of cuts, which were intended to remove all of Clouzot's perceived anti-American commentary.  The film was particularly successful in France, where it attracted an audience of seven million (making it the second most popular French film of the year after Le Retour de Don Camillo).  It won two awards at Cannes in 1953 - the Grand Prize (which hadn't yet been named the Palme d'Or) and a special award for Charles Vanel.  It also picked up the Golden Bear at the 1953 Berlin Film Festival and the 1955 BAFTA Best Film award.  The film was remade in 1977 by William Friedkin as Sorcerer, starring Roy Scheider and Bruno Cremer.  Yves Montand turned down an invitation to reprise his role in this film, which is little more than a shallow echo of the original.

Le Salaire de la peur secured the international reputation of its director Henri-Georges Clouzot, who went on to win further acclaim with his equally suspenseful, equally grim thriller Les Diaboliques (1955).  After that, health problems and a lack of inspiration would diminish and truncate Clouzot's filmmaking career, although he would still turn out some noteworthy pieces of cinema, including:  Le Mystère Picasso (1956), La Vérité (1960) and La Prisonnière (1968).  As interesting as Clouzot's later work is, none of these films is as well-known nor as viscerally intense as Le Salaire de la peur.  A gripping noir thriller, this film offers the most gruelling of viewing experiences, never failing to hold an audience spellbound and shock with its dramatic set-pieces and unremittingly nihilistic tone.  This is one journey you will not forget in a hurry - if you dare to take it.

Film Synopsis

In a dusty, hot South American mining town, European immigrants eke out a meagre existence, struggling to find work in an area of high unemployment.  A young French Corsican, Mario, strikes up a friendship with a new arrival in the town, Jo.  Their situation looks hopeless until, one day, an American oil company announces it is recruiting four truck drivers to carry out a dangerous mission.  The drivers have to transport two truckloads of the explosive nitroglycerine to an oilfield, to put out a raging fire.  The journey is 300 miles long, across some treacherous mountain terrain.  Mario, Jo, and two other men are selected for the job, enticed by the high salary offered.  Not long after setting out, the four men encounter the first in a series of nerve-wracking obstacles which threaten to obliterate them, but the greatest obstacle of all is fear...