Wages of Fear, The (4K UHD Review)
- Review Date: Mar 19, 2025
- Format: 4K Ultra HD
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Director
Henri-Georges ClouzotRelease Date(s)
1953 (March 4, 2025)Studio(s)
Vera Film/Filmsonor CICC/Fono Roma (The Criterion Collection – Spine #36)- Film/Program Grade: A+
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: B
- Extras Grade: B+
Review
“There’s nothing!”
“Existential” is a term that has been applied to many films by directors like Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, and Henri-Georges Clouzot, but the reality is that the term is used somewhat nebulously—which is fair enough, because existentialism is a broad philosophy that encompasses a variety of different movements and disciplines. Among them is a concept that probably gets to the heart of what people really intend whenever they apply the term “existential” to a film: nihilism, the view that life is meaningless and lacks any higher purpose or calling. Nihilism may be a subset of existentialism, but it’s still a part, not the whole. Clouzot wasn’t really an existentialist, but he was bitterly pessimistic and deeply cynical, and it’s a short path from that to reach open nihilism. Nowhere is that better expressed than in his 1953 masterpiece The Wages of Fear (aka Le salaire de la peur), a film that’s frequently been called an existential thriller, but it’s really something far deeper and darker than that.
Clouzot’s own torturous path to making The Wages of Fear goes a long way to explain why this unremittingly bleak story appealed to him so much. He had worked for UFA in Germany during the early 1930s, but ended up being fired for having Jewish friends. Shortly after that, he contracted tuberculosis, which left him bedridden for most of the rest of the decade. When Germany occupied France in 1940, he reluctantly went to work for the German-controlled Continental Films, where he was fired after making Le Corbeau, which had managed to piss off the Vichy Government, the French Resistance, and even the Catholic Church (Clouzot was nothing if not an equal-opportunity offender). After the war, he was prosecuted as a collaborator and was briefly blacklisted before finally resuming work in 1947. So, it’s fair to say that Clouzot came by his personal brand of nihilism quite naturally, and it’s also not particularly surprising that he was notorious for his mistreatment of the cast and crew on his sets.
The Wages of Fear is based on the 1950 novel Le salaire de la peur by author, reporter, and occasional expatriate Henri Girard (writing under the pseudonym Georges Arnaud). Girard came by his own form of cynicism no less naturally, having been accused of the murder of his father, aunt, and a family servant in 1941. Girard spent nearly two years in jail under inhumane conditions before finally being acquitted of the crime, and by 1947, he had left France to live in South America instead. He later returned to France before once again relocating to French Algeria, where he received a two-year suspended sentence for supporting the Algerian independence movement. Girard traveled many, many miles in his life, and it was his experiences in Venezuela that inspired Le salaire de la peur.
Clouzot adapted the novel with the help of his brother Jean (aka Jérôme Géronimi), preserving the broad strokes of the narrative while changing many of the details to suit his own purposes. Mario (Yves Montand), Jo (Charles Vanel), Luigi (Folco Lulli), and Bimba (Peter van Eyck) are four expatriates wasting away in the small South American village of Las Piedras. It’s essentially a company town run by the American conglomerate Southern Oil Company, but there’s no work for anyone, and little hope for escape. When an uncontrollable fire erupts at one of the SOC derricks, the only way to cap it is to use some of the nitroglycerin that the company has stored in Las Piedras. The ruthless SOC foreman O’Brien (William Tubbs) offers to pay the men $2,000 each in order to drive two truckloads of nitroglycerin over 300 miles of dangerously rough roads to reach the oil fields. O’Brien willingly exploits the fact that the men have nothing to lose, and he knows full well that SOC has nothing to lose either, since they’re complete nobodies without any union protection—and precious few people to remember them once their gone, either.
The Wages of Fear opens at a leisurely pace, spending an hour with these men in order to define what kind of individuals that they are. Yet Clouzot offers no explanations regarding who they are, or why they’re in South America. When William Friedkin remade The Wages of Fear as Sorcerer in 1977, he added a different prologue that gave backstories for each of the men, explaining why they ended up where they were. Yet Clouzot’s brilliant insight was to realize that those kind of details don’t really matter to the basic story that Arnaud crafted in Le salaire de la peur. The only important thing is that they’re desperate men, and the reasons why are irrelevant. In existentialist terms, Clouzot defines these men purely by what they’re experiencing in the here and now, not by whoever or whatever they may have been in a previous life. Existence itself has been sufficient to make these men desperate enough to take on the suicide mission that the Faustian O’Brien is offering.
What follows over the course of the next hour and a half of The Wages of Fear are some of the most extraordinarily tense set pieces ever put to film. The men face one obstacle after another during their dangerous journey, barely evading death time and time again. The Wages of Fear is a masterpiece of suspense from one of the acknowledged masters of suspense, which is ironic considering the fact that as an existentialist/nihilist film, there shouldn’t be any real suspense at all. Everyone will end up in the same place no matter what path that they take to get there. Mario, Jo, Luigi, and Bimba are just cogs in the corporate machine, little more than spokes in the wheels of the massive trucks that they’re driving on the behalf of corporate profits. In the end, none of their acts of bravery will make any real difference. Regardless of whether they live or die, the Southern Oil Company will still go on, because there are always more cogs to exploit. Even if these men manage to help put out the fire in the oil fields, the Inferno still awaits them.
Or does it? Near the conclusion of The Wages of Fear, Mario is driving the truck toward their final destination while cradling the injured Jo in his arms. Jo is struggling to stay awake, and Mario recognizes the mortal danger that the older man will face if he succumbs to sleep. Mario wants to keep him talking, so they reminisce together about life in Paris. They’re both familiar with the Rue Galande, so they discuss the landmarks along that famous street, including a fence where Jo never could never see what was on the other side. Mario tells him that there was nothing there, but Jo keeps forgetting, and as he’s slowly fading, he asks Mario one more time:
“I’m trying to remember... the fence. What was behind the fence?”
“Nothing, I told you. Nothing.”
Suddenly, Jo’s eyes widen in alarm, and he exclaims:
“There’s nothing!”
Of course, the fence that Jo is really confronting isn’t the one on the Rue Galande, but rather a barrier of a far more, well, existential sort. After having led a meaningless existence and now seeing what lies beyond this life, he finally realizes that he’s gazed long enough into the abyss that the abyss is gazing back into him. It’s a purely nihilistic moment that deprives this dangerous mission of any real meaning. There are winners and losers in life, but in The Wages of Fear, even the winners are ultimately losers. If anything, Luigi and Bimba were the ones who got off easy. It’s only at this point that Mario also finally understands the truth, and that explains his reckless behavior later on, after having picked up his fleeting reward:
“Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher,
vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labour
which he taketh under the sun?
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh:
but the earth abideth for ever.”
Except that in The Wages of Fear, even the earth itself is transitory. It’s only capitalistic exploitation of the earth that abideth for ever, and everyone is just a cog in the hopeless machine. There really is nothing after all. Call that existentialism if you must, but it seems pretty clear that Clouzot was drilling much deeper into the heart of darkness than can be encompassed by such an imprecise term. Yet thanks to Clouzot’s willingness to gaze so deeply into the Nothing, The Wages of Fear abides.
Cinematographer Armand Thirard shot The Wages of Fear on 35mm film using spherical lenses, framed at the full Academy aperture of 1.37:1 for its theatrical release. This uncut 153-minute version is based on the 2017 digital restoration that was performed by Hiventy and TF1 Studio in collaboration with La Cinémathèque française. The original 35mm nitrate camera negative was scanned in 4K on a sprocketless wet-gate scanner, with missing portions scanned from a fine-grain positive element instead. Damage was cleaned up on a frame-by-frame basis, with no global tools applied, and the final grading was supervised by cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman. No HDR grade has been included here, while the BFI release in the U.K. offers both Dolby Vision and HDR10, but it’s still presented in SDR with 10-bit color instead of the standard 8-bit color of Blu-ray. (More on all of that in a moment.)
The improvements in fine detail are immediately noticeable in the texturing of the background material during the opening credits, which is interesting considering that theoretically those should have been derived from dupe elements cut into the negative. That’s equally true of the dissolves and wipes throughout the rest of the film—they’re surprisingly sharp and well-resolved. There’s no information available on whether or not Hiventy had access to negative trims and regenerated the optical work digitally, but it seems unlikely that they would have been preserved. On the other hand, it’s equally unlikely that optical printer work from 1953 could look this pristine, so it’s a bit of a mystery. Adding to that mystery is the fact that there is one obvious optical dupe in the dissolve to the first shot of Luigi at 18:40, which is very soft and lacking in detail, but that may have been some of the material that had to be scanned from the positive element so it’s several generations removed from the negative.
The rest of the restored footage lacks the clarity of everything else that was scanned from the negative, but most of it matches reasonably well, so it’s not too obvious unless you’re looking for it. There’s little to no remaining damage visible—note that the small circular blemish on several shots in the airport sequence was a spot on the camera lens and/or filters, so it’s an artifact from the production that has been justifiably left alone. Density levels are solid throughout, with just a touch of wavering visible at times, mostly in the skies. Grayscale, contrast, and black levels are all as they should be, and the grain always looks natural and perfectly filmic, never heightened, exaggerated, or artificial.
While the lack of an HDR grade may bother some people, the overall exposure latitude of vintage nitrate negatives never had that much dynamic range to begin with. However, the move to 10-bit color means that there are now quadruple the gradations between pure white and pure black than what’s available with the 8-bit color of Blu-ray. At a minimum, that means that there’s less chance of any banding being visible on some displays. Yet it also means that there’s more detail in the grayscale, with a smoother, more natural-looking image. It’s important to note that the HDR grades that the BFI has been offering on titles like The Wages of Fear, The Seventh Seal, and Seven Samurai were created by them and not a part of the original restorations. While it’s still possible to strengthen the contrast and deepen the black levels that way, it also tends to exaggerate the grain, and it’s arguable that Criterion’s non-HDR versions are more accurate to how the original theatrical prints would have looked—which means that they’re also more accurate to the intentions of the filmmakers. Ultimately, it comes down to personal preference. Many people will prefer the stronger contrast that the BFI’s HDR grades can offer, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but don’t automatically assume that HDR=better. As with most things in life, reality is a bit more nuanced than that.
Audio is offered in French 1.0 mono LPCM, with removable English subtitles. Hiventy digitized the original 35mm optical soundtrack using a Resonance scanner, which captures the actual optical image from the film and then uses that to generate new digital audio files. Any resulting pops, clicks, or other defects were removed digitally. The results are crisp and clear, with maybe just a touch of excessive sibilance remaining in some of the dialogue, especially in William Tubbs’ English dialogue (his naturally raspy voice doesn’t help in that regard). Overall fidelity is limited to what the original optical tracks were capable of reproducing, so dynamics are constrained and there’s not much low end, but Georges Auric’s score still has some nice clarity to it.
Criterion’s 4K Ultra HD release of The Wages of Fear is a two-disc set that includes a Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film—note that this is a remastered disc featuring the newer 4K master and the 153-minute cut, not just a repressing of their 148-minute 2009 release. It also includes an expanded 38-page version of the previous 16-page booklet, retaining the Dennis Lehane essay but adding an excerpt from the book Henri-Georges Clouzot, cinéaste by José-Louis Bocquet and Marc Godin (plus completely different restoration notes, naturally). There are no extras on the UHD, but the following are included on the Blu-ray only:
- Michael Romanoff (HD – 22:26)
- Marc Godin (HD – 10:09)
- Yves Montand (Upscaled SD – 5:00)
- Henri-Georges Clouzot: The Enlightened Tyrant (Upscaled SD – 52:33)
- Censored (HD – 12:12)
- The Wages of Fear: The Restoration (HD – 8:06)
- Original Theatrical Trailer (HD – 2:53)
- Janus Trailer (HD – 1:39)
With the exception of the Restoration featurette and the trailers, all of the rest of the extras are carried over from Criterion’s 2009 Blu-ray—which were themselves ported over from their 2005 DVD (their older LaserDisc had no supplements). There are three archival interviews, the first two of which were recorded in 2005. Assistant director Michael Romanoff (aka Prince Michael Feodorovich) opens by acknowledging Clouzot’s reputation, but says that in his own experience the director was very reasonable to work with. That said, he does point out the antagonistic relationships that Clouzot had with some of the actors. He also describes the lengthy shoot and a few of the challenges that they faced along the way. Clouzot biographer Marc Godin focuses on Clouzot himself, calling him one of the great “classic” directors in French Cinema but a puzzling character during the 1950s. Godin says that while he was indeed a master of suspense, it’s inaccurate to refer to him as the French Hitchcock—he was far too pessimistic, and had no sense of humor. Finally, the interview with Yves Montand was recorded back in 1988 for the French television program Cinéma Cinémas. Montand talks about how Clouzot and Simone Signoret revitalized his interest in film, and says that his own reputation as a terror on the set is a myth.
Henri-Georges Clouzot: The Enlightened Tyrant is a 2004 episode from the TV5Monde television series Ces messieurs de la famille. It’s a genuine portrait of the man, not just in terms of biographical details, but also in the way that it limns his forceful personality through reminiscences by his friends, family, and co-workers. Interviewees include his brother Marcel and his second wife Inès; actors Brigitte Bardot, Suzy Delair, Laurent Terzief, and Cécile Aubry; head makeup artist Charly Koubesserian; and film historian Claude Gauteur. The Enlightened Tyrant also provide an overview of Clouzot’s career, but always viewed through the lens of the kind of person (and filmmaker) that he was. There’s a section in the middle devoted to the making of The Wages of Fear, starting at roughly the 25:00 mark, but it’s well worth watching the whole thing in order to get the full picture of Clouzot.
Censored is an archival featurette examining the differences between the original full-length French cut of The Wages of Fear and the significantly shortened version that was released in the United States. Approximately 24 minutes of footage was removed, supposedly due to perceptions of anti-Americanism and homosexual subtexts. Even the nihilism was toned down. Censored collects some of the scenes that were missing from the U.S. version, intercut with excerpts from vintage articles discussing the controversies over their removal.
Finally, The Wages of Fear: The Restoration features Hiventy’s Benjamin Alimi stepping through the process that was used to scan the nitrate negative for The Wages of Fear and digitally restore both the audio and the video. It includes the grading process that used an archival 35mm print as a reference (and no, there’s no mention of HDR because they didn’t create a grade for it).
Of course, the BFI’s HDR grade isn’t the only thing missing on Criterion’s version, since they also offer their own supplements that include a commentary by Adrian Martin and an audio-only conversation between Yves Montand and Don Allan, plus the following featurettes and shorts: A Road Trip Out of Hell? Or Into It? Purgatory and The Wages of Fear; Lucy Mazdon on The Wages of Fear; They Take the High Road; Fire Checked by Explosives!; and Transporting Loads—With or Without Roads. The 2017 Region-B Blu-ray from TF1 in France had a completely different slate of extras that included Perspectives on The Wages of Fear; The Extraordinary Ambition of Henri-Georges Clouzot; At the Source of the Original Shock; and Memories of Yves Montand. The 2022 Blu-ray from Al!ve in Germany also offered their own German-language commentary with Dr. Rolf Giesen.
While I don’t have any of those for comparison purposes, it does look like the BFI has the edge in terms of extras, especially since it also includes the interviews with Michael Romanoff and Marc Godin—although it doesn’t include The Enlightened Tyrant, which is no small thing. Of course, for some people, the HDR grades alone may be the biggest reason to import the BFI’s UHD. However, I’m going to go out on a limb here and state my preference for Criterion’s non-HDR version. While I don’t have the BFI’s disc to do a direct comparison, I do have both Criterion’s and the BFI’s Seven Samurai, and I lean toward the non-HDR version in that case as well. As always, your own mileage may vary. Yet that’s not going to stop me from recommending Criterion’s version, especially for anyone who doesn’t want to deal with imports or Region B Blu-rays. It’s got a fine set of extras and an extremely natural-looking 4K presentation of the film, and it’s a huge upgrade over their previous Blu-ray version in every possible respect. One way or the other, The Wages of Fear belongs in any cineaste’s library, so if you don’t already own it, this is an excellent place to start.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).