Might as well say this early. 'Fear' is one of the best movies ever made, an example of pure cinema, a movie that is criminally simplistic in its execution. This is a story of desperation and life and death, the extreme and foolhardy choices an individual will make to alter and hopefully better his life. If you're skeptical about watching a French movie or reading subtitles, get over yourself. Because of its subject matter, you can't help but feel a bit uncomfortable watching Clouzot's film, but that's the goal. Sit back and let this one wash over you.
In a remote region of South America, an oil well owned by an American company, Southern Oil Company (SOC), has caught fire. The only solution to handle the blaze is to blow up the well, sealing it off. The only problem? The nitroglycerin needed is hundreds of miles away in a decrepit little village full of international tramps and vagabonds. The company offers a huge payday to any drivers willing to try and attempt to deliver the nitro, one of the most unstable elements in explosives around. Four men are accepted, Mario (Yves Montand), Jo (Charles Vanel), Luigi (Folco Lulli), and Bimba (Peter van Eyck), the four splitting up to drive two trucks packed with the nitro. With thousands of dollars at stake, the two trucks set out on a 300-mile plus trip through hell where any bump in the road, any disruption at all could set the nitro off, killing the drivers in an instant. A suicide mission if there ever was, can this quartet pull off the job?
It is hard to put into words how ridiculously tense this 1953 French film really is. An early introduction of the power of nitroglycerin sets the stage when a single drop of the liquid touches the ground, producing a deafening roar in a confined setting. If a single drop produces that effect, what would a whole truckload produce if something went wrong? Almost 90 minutes of a 131-minute movie are spent on the road with the two trucks and their respective drivers, and you're waiting at the edge of your seats, living and dying with every bump, every noise, every little pothole in the road. That's all it will take to set it off, and in an instant life is gone and death takes over. It is an amazing movie to watch, a sick beauty to it all.
To amplify this incredible tension, Clouzot makes a brilliant decision. His first 45 minutes are almost painfully slow, laying out the groundwork of this desperate group of men in an isolated South American village. The only way out is a tiny airport. They need money to buy a ticket, but there's no work or jobs and so they waste away. These are desperate men, pushed to the limit where a suicide mission delivering nitro is seen as a positive. Through this first segment, we get to meet the players, Mario, a French playboy yearning for Paris, Jo, an aging gangster not as young or tough as he once was, Luigi, a hard-working Italian who discovers he may be dying of a lung disease, and Bimba, a Dutch pilot with a tortured past. It is slow going at times, but these scenes are needed. The adrenaline of the driving scenes are incredible on their own, but knowing the characters and their motivations? It amps that adrenaline up to an almost painful level. We want these characters to succeed. Slow at times? You bet, but completely necessary and a brilliant choice.
The performances here are primal and perfect, human beings at their most basic level; survival. Montand is one of my favorite actors, and his performance rivals his equally impressive turn in Le Cercle Rouge. His Mario is the main character, and one who isn't always a likable guy, or at least someone who's easy to like. He becomes obsessed with mission, willing to risk it all even when it would be so easy to turn back. Vanel is perfectly cast as his opposite, the new arrival in town who seems to have it all figured out. Only when his back is up against the wall does he realize he's not who he thought he was. Lulli and van Eyck aren't given the same screentime, but their performances are just as impressive, putting a desperation and a human edge on these two men. The director's wife Vera Clouzot plays Linda, Mario's girl in the village with William Tubbs playing O'Brien, the brutal, cynical local American head of SOC who hires the men for their mission.
The simplicity of the mission and the story on the whole is what sets this movie apart. A handful of sequences keep the momentum going from the second the two trucks -- a few miles apart -- leave the village for the oil well. The opener is a beat-up dirt road with two options. Floor it across the road, negating the bumps in a quick ride, or slowly go over it, taking significantly longer. Unable to communicate, what if the back truck decides to speed while the lead truck goes slowly? A second sequence is a hairpin turn on a mountainside, a rickety platform the only support the truck will have. The third is a giant boulder in the road, the four drivers using a tiny supply of nitro to blow it up. The last is a perilous drive through an oil-filled hole, the desperation weighing down on the drivers. These sequences are incredible to watch and be a part of. It's hard to express the power here of these scenes. They need to be seen to be believed and appreciated.
Now for the ending, one pretty typical of French films in the 1950s and 1960s. An epic downer, but in a way you wouldn't expect. The movie delivers its fair share of shocking moments, but Clouzot's ending is the most shocking without a doubt. Like the best surprise endings, it leaves you feeling like you've been punched in the stomach. The movie is one of the all-time bests, an incredibly dark, cynical look at human life and what drives us. How far would you go? Would you go through what these four men did? What's your limit?
Also worth checking out the American remake, one of the few remakes to rival the original, 1977's Sorcerer, which I reviewed a couple years back. Read the review HERE. It's an early review so bear with me. TCM offers three clips which you can watch HERE of 'Fear.'
The Wages of Fear <---trailer (1953): ****/****
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