The Wages of Fear

I was first introduced to Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1953 classic film The Wages of Fear on late night TV, always a bad place to discover a movie. I didn't know it at the time, but I was watching a heavily cut version that was about 20 minutes short of the original 1953 release, including completely editing out the ending Clouzot intended. Sign of a good movie? I loved the edited version, but short of dropping $45 on the Criterion Collection DVD, I could never track down the longer version. Thanks Turner Classic Movies, it was worth the wait.

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): ****/****

Night People

From the end of World War II when Berlin was divided into two sections, American and Russians, the movies had a villain basically written for them for the next 50 years; the Russkies, the Red scare, the Pinkos, the Commies.  Whatever you want to call them, it worked. They were the complete opposites of us civil, humane Americans, always up to something shady in hopes of taking the United States and everything it represented down a notch or two or ten.

Made in 1954, Night People uses the Russians as the bad guys, but never puts a face on the villains.  Instead, they are only talked about, leaving the audience to make up their mind about them.  We hear about their tactics, their underhanded way of doing things. They're always up to something, holding a resentment against the Americans and anyone that opposes their way of life.  It is a weird little movie that can be hard to follow at times, but considering it was released in the midst of McCarthyism as Senator Joe McCarthy went on a Communist witch hunt in the U.S., it certainly is an interesting time capsule of the 1950s.

Walking back to the U.S. base in Berlin, an Army corporal is kidnapped and smuggled into the Russian sector in the city. An officer with the Provost Marshal, Colonel Steve Van Dyke (Gregory Peck) is given the case, told to get the corporal back through negotiations with the Russians. The soldier's father, Charles Leatherby (Broderick Crawford), is involved in big business back in the states and travels to Germany to help the effort, claiming he'll put pressure on people who aren't used to being pressured. Van Dyke though is a veteran of these prickly situations while Leatherby has no idea what he's getting into.  The Russians offer a prisoner exchange, the soldier for two private citizens living in Berlin they want to get their hands on.  Nothing comes easy though, and the exchange isn't as simple as it is made out to be.

Some reviews at the IMDB pointed out that director Nunnally Johnson's film doesn't have the same grittiness that similar movies like Carol Reed's The Third Man did. That's a fair criticism to make of Night People because honestly, it isn't as gritty or hard-hitting in its story about a post-WWII city trying to move on.  It was filmed in vivid Technicolor (which even pan-n-scan can't ruin) so the movie is full of color and brightness, gorgeous city locations.  It is too polished at times, too representative of a big studio production as opposed to a darker, seeder film.  I don't know what I'd expect differently though.  It's a movie made in 1954 meant for an audience rooting for the Americans.

Maybe ahead of its time is its handling of government matters concerning two governments who want nothing to do with each other as sworn enemies.  Both the Americans and Russians can't help each other out in the open, resorting to back channels, secret messages, double agents, and under the table agreements to get a job done.  Peck's Col. Van Dyke knows how to work the system for all it's worth to pull off the mission successfully.  We see his interactions with the state department (Max Showalter), his own agents in the field (Anita Bjork and Peter van Eyck), British intelligence (John Horsley), and in this situation, even the father of the kidnapped soldier who assumes he can do the job better than anyone else.  Sometimes difficult to follow, the plot does deliver a solid twist or two late that I didn't see coming.

A story about an American attempt to negotiate a kidnapped soldier sounds pretty serious to me in terms of a movie's tone and level of seriousness.  Why then does this movie rely on these little comedic bits that seem ripped from another much lighter movie?  Walter Abel's Doctor is constantly bumming cigarettes off anyone who will give him one, later claiming 'these things will kill you. That's why I don't smoke.' Buddy Ebsen's Sgt. McColloch is always slipping away to find a score of a baseball game, talking about all his 'dolls' in every city. Peck's Colonel Van Dyke says 'Holy Moses!' so much it could be a drinking game. The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is an attempt (a weak one at that) to humanize these American characters against the evil monstrosity that is the Russians.  The comedy definitely takes you out of the movie though, a completely unnecessary addition to the movie.

Now onto the cast which is pretty good.  I liked Peck's character the best, a young officer who's been worn down some by the nature of his job.  He knows it is a nasty business that has to be done, but it's always been his job.  When Crawford's Mr. Leatherby shows up, he is forced to show the newcomer how nasty his profession can be.  Peck and Crawford have a great chemistry together right from the start. Also look for Rita Gam as Ricki, Peck's girlfriend/secretary, Jill Esmond as one of the prisoners meant to be exchanged, along with Ebsen, Abel, Showatler, and all the other names previously mentioned.

Night People <---TCM trailer (1954): ** 1/2 /**** 

Shalako

By 1968, James Bond himself, Sean Connery, was riding high off the success of the first five 007 movies he made, most recently with You Only Live Twice.  When he wasn't playing Bond, Connery did his damnedest to avoid being typecast, generally succeeding with a wide-ranging list of roles that continued into the 1970s and 1980s.  But in all those movies, he only did one western, and it's a good one, 1968's Shalako.

Based on a Louis L'Amour novel, this Euro-western has a lot going for it with a lot of different elements thrown together in the final product.  Start with the uniquely international cast that includes American, English, French, Scottish, German and Spanish actors and actresses, all of them with speaking roles.  While the story ends up being somewhat familiar late in the movie, the build-up to that point is different from about 99.9% of other westerns.  At times it can be a little too much with so many different elements working together and sometimes against each other, but the positives outweigh the negatives...for me at least.

Frontiersman and former U.S. cavalry officer Shalako Carlin (Connery) stumbles across an Apache ambush, saving a beautiful French woman, Countess Irina Lazaar (Brigitte Bardot), from certain death. Irina is part of a European hunting party headed by Baron Von Halstatt (Peter Van Eyck), Sir Charles Daggett (Jack Hawkins), and U.S. senator Henry Clark (Alexander Knox) who are touring the American west, killing any animals they see, their wives along for the adventure. Knowing what awaits them, Shalako tries to convince them to leave the territory as the Apaches don't take kindly to anyone riding onto their land.  The party ignores him, but when their guide, Bosky Fulton (Stephen Boyd) and his men double-cross them, they have no one to turn to other than Shalako.

Above all else, I'd say watch this movie for the cast, starting with Connery and on down the line through all the supporting parts, some much bigger than others.  If anything, there may be too many names involved because characters aren't given the attention they deserve at times.  Connery's Shalako -- an all around badass like most L'Amour heroes -- doesn't even dominate the screen, and the movie's named after him!  Those I could get into the plot review are just some of the names, there's also Honor Blackman as Hawkins' wife, Woody Strode as an Apache chief (not as bad as a Mongol bandit I guess), Valerie French as the senator's wife, and Julian Mateos and Don Barry as two gunmen along for the ride.

Seeing Connery in a western setting might seem odd -- Scottish actor dudes up in bucksins and six-shooter -- but it works.  He is typical of most L'Amour heroes in his ability to handle himself in even the hairiest situation, loyal and honest, and does the right thing over the thing that makes the most sense.  In the end, you know he'll win and get the girl.  Oops, did I just give away the ending?  My bad.  Director Edward Dmytryk had a bit of a predicament with leading lady Bardot, the definition of a 1960s sex kitten. Basically do you make her look like a woman on the frontier or like, well, Brigitte Bardot.  He goes with option B.  Hair always look perfect as does the makeup.  I'll disagree with a lot of reviews, I thought Connery and Bardot had good chemistry, and her sexy French accent goes a long way.  It just does, no other explanation needed.

Keeping it all together is the movie's biggest problem as Dmytryk juggles all these characters and subplots.  The story is at its strongest when sticking with Shalako and the motley crew of survivors he's leading.  Boyd is always a solid villain but his character could basically be erased from the storyline and it wouldn't skip a beat.  Van Eyck and Hawkins do what they can with stiff upper lip aristocratic characters.  If nothing else, there is more eye candy than usual in a typical western.  Along with Bardot -- who is given a topless scene with strategically placed hands -- there's Blackman and French, neither of whom are too bad to look at.

I wish there was more I could say about this Euro-western, but I'm drawing a blank.  The cast is solid if under utilized, the action is exciting, and the Spanish desert fills in nicely for the American southwest.  Be forewarned, there's a truly awful theme song -- give it a listen HERE -- that plays over the credits on either end of the movie.  I'll apologize in advance for the song being stuck in your head for the next few days.  It is a western that does nothing spectacularly, but instead does everything in a solid, workmanlike manner.

Shalako <---TCM clip (1968): ***/**** 

The Bridge at Remagen

One Memorial Day I don't know how many years back, I stumbled across a WWII movie on Turner Classic Movies that I'd never seen before, much less heard of.  1969's The Bridge at Remagen is based on a WWII battle, but because of a general lack of big names -- whether it be the director or the cast -- is not mentioned in discussions of other 1960s MGM war movies. It is a product of the times as America was fully involved by 1969 in Vietnam, but it is a very effective look at the closing days of the war.

Too often war movies pick a side and go from there, disregarding the other side completely.  Some of the better ones at least attempt to show both sides of the war.  It is said of war that 'the victors write the history books' but in many ways, the soldiers on either side are very similar.  They're fighting because that is what they're told to do, their superiors deciding what should or shouldn't be done.  Director John Guillermin splits time evenly between the Americans and Germans, giving an excellent look at one of the key battles late in WWII with an underrated cast and some great action.

It's March 1945 and the German armies are in full retreat.  The Allied forces are nipping at their heels, chasing them back into Germany.  The German High Command has ordered all bridges over the Rhine River destroyed to help slow down the Allied charge, but one bridge at Remagen remains. General Von Brock (Peter van Eyck) sees that 75,000 German troops will be cut off if the bridge is destroyed and instead sends a close friend and fellow officer, Major Paul Krueger (Robert Vaughn), to hold the bridge as long as possible. Just miles away, the Allies charge forward hoping to catch the German defenses napping, at their front an armored infantry unit commanded by Lt. Hartman (George Segal), who after weeks at the point is leading an exhausted unit.  But pressure from HQ and the battalion commander (Bradford Dillman) keeps the men going, hoping to end the war as quickly as possible.        

Where this reflects the times is the portrayal of a war near its end, the soldiers deteriorating with pure exhaustion.  The end of the war is near, and the Germans are turning on each other.  Vaughn's Krueger is promised a defense that doesn't exist and reinforcements that can't be moved.  The SS and Gestapo run rampant, ruling with an iron fist.  The ranks are thinned by deserters, and refilled with old men and young boys.  The Americans are always on the move, pushing themselves and the Germans to their absolute limits.  They're bone tired but they have no option but to follow orders.  The rules of war are gone to a certain point, and survival has taken priority over everything else.  It is a cynical story at times, the effects of war wearing men down on both sides.  Frightening at times to see the portrayal of the closing days of the war presented in a realistic fashion.

The portrayal of the opposing forces is seen through the eyes of two junior officers, both with different missions but driven to the same point.  Segal is perfect as Lt. Hartman, a company commander at his wit's ends when it comes to commanding.  He's trying to protect his men as best as possible, but HQ has their objectives.  Guest star E.G. Marshall as an American general callously states "100 may die, but 10,000 will be saved." An honest statement in the big picture, but when you're part of the 100, does it matter?  Across the river is Vaughn's Krueger, a career German officer -- not a Nazi -- disobeying orders but still trying to save as many men as possible.  The two actors don't share any scenes together, but there is a bond between them nonetheless.  They may be on opposite sides of the war, wearing different uniforms, but in many ways they're the same.

In the honest portrayal of a war in its closing days, both sides aren't shown as particularly heroic.  Ben Gazzara is a scene-stealer as Sgt. Angelo, one of Hartman's men who is a good soldier under fire but rubs the Lt. the wrong way by picking clean the bodies of dead German soldiers.  Gazzara is so good in the part that you forget at times how despicable his actions are.  He balances the good with the bad, the power of his actions wearing on him.  Forced to kill a Hitler Youth teenager, he almost snaps when confronted.  All of the Americans aren't shown in a positive light, including Hartman's unit which includes Bo Hopkins, Matt Clark, Robert Logan, Steve Sandor, and Tom Heaton. Dillman's Barnes is a good officer but he has no idea how to interact or treat his men. The Germans too are at each other's throats.  Look for Hans Christian Blech in a solid supporting part as one of Krueger's officers.

Bouncing back and forth between the American and German perspective could have caused a disjointed story, but that's never really a problem.  Instead, it drives the pace at a lightning speed as the Germans fall back, the Americans pushing forward.  The action scenes are well-handled and nicely choreographed starting with the filming locations in Czechoslovakia where a bridge similar in appearance to the actual Remagen bridge was used.  There is an epic scale to the battles with the end result possibly being an earlier end to the war, but on a personal level we see Hartman's men ordered across a bridge fully expecting it to blow at any moment.  Full of tension from the beginning, the battle sequences are aided by Guillermin's camerawork, right there on the ground with the foot soldiers.

A highly underrated WWII story.  Elmer Bernstein's score (Main Theme listen HERE) borrows from some of his more notable musical scores, and at times sounds more like a western theme, but for the most part it's good. You can watch the whole movie in a widescreen version via Youtube, starting with Part 1 of 11. Don't let the lack of big names scare you away from this one. An all-around solid look at the closing days of WWII and one of its key engagements.

The Bridge at Remagen <---trailer (1969): **** /****

Five Graves to Cairo

If there's anything better than a spy movie, it's a case of mistaken identity spy movie.  When dealing with spies or secret agents, there's already a natural tension so adding some more confusion just amps things up; the Bourne movies played this up perfectly.  A long-time writer in Hollywood but directing only his third movie, Billy Wilder deals with spies and mistaken identity amidst the North African campaign during WWII with 1943's Five Graves to Cairo.

Walking out of the desert after his tank was destroyed and his crew killed, Cpl. J.J. Bramble (Franchot Tone) wearily stumbles into a hotel in a dusty, bombed-out town.  The owner, Farid (Akim Tamiroff), and his staff of one, housekeeper Mouche (Anne Baxter), don't know what to do with him and the situation instantly escalates when a German convoy drives into town. It's an advance group of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel's headquarters looking to set up HQ as the Germans march back across Egypt, pushing the British back with ease.  When Rommel's aide (Peter van Eyck) questions who the man is, Bramble poses as the hotel's waiter who was killed in the previous night's bombing.

But just looking for any shot at survival, Bramble's plan falls apart.  The actual waiter, an Alsatian by the name of Paul Davos, was a German agent working as an advance scout for the German attacks.  Luckily, no one knew Davos by appearance, only by reputation, so Bramble is able to play along and poses as the agent.  Even Rommel (Erich von Stroheim) falls for the ruse, talking openly about his plans for an upcoming attack.  But more importantly, Rommel talks about secret supply depots, the 'Five Graves,' buried deep beneath the Egyptian desert, explaining how his lines and troops are so well-supplied.  But surrounded by Germans, can Bramble figure a way to get this information to the retreating Allies?

From the moment the Germans arrive, it's pretty clear who Bramble is going to have to worry about, Van eyck's German lieutenant, Schwegler.  Based on a play by Lajos Biro, Wilder's story has that claustrophobic feel of being on a stage with Farid's run-down hotel substituting for that stage.  Bramble is between a rock and a hard place; he can't run away, where would he go? Into the desert?  If he stays, he's almost surely to be caught sooner or later.  Instead, he's forced to hide in a hornets' nest of people who would shoot him as easily as snapping their fingers if they figured out his actual identity.

Wilder films these hotel scenes -- many of them at night -- in the dark and shadows where anything could be waiting to strike.  This is not a large hotel with just 16 rooms so Bramble, Farid and Mouche room just a few doors down from Rommel and his staff.  That does provide for some awkward moments as Bramble is a bit of a loud talker, making me question how no one heard him spouting his plans to ruin the Germans.  These are some great scenes, full of foreboding and claustrophobia that Bramble is stuck in this situation with nowhere to go.

With this self-contained story -- the war somehow feels very far off even though bombs are dropping not too far away -- the characters are more archetypal than red-blooded, 3-D characters.  Tone's Bramble is the stiff upper-lip British soldier who sees a chance to cripple the German war effort.  Baxter's Mouche is a young French woman looking to rescue her brother from a German concentration camp and is not beneath conspiring with the Germans to get what she wants.  Tamiroff's Farid is a worrier, both for his life and his hotel, and is more of a stereotype than anything but he still manages to make the character sympathetic.  von Stroheim and van Eyck are perfectly cast as the intimidating Germans, and von Stroheim especially is an inspired choice to play Rommel, although he does make him a bit of an eccentric.

Released in 1943, Wilder's movie is suspiciously devoid of a propaganda, war-time message...until the end.  For about 80 minutes, this is a spy story in a war setting full of tension and drama.  The last 15 minutes try to deliver that ever-important message of hope to the home front.  Surprisingly enough, this message works surprisingly well because of a twist revealed in these final scenes.  Leave it to a pro like Wilder to make a propaganda message actually entertaining.  Too often movies released in wartime sacrifice story and entertainment for delivering that message, but not Wilder, who revels in it and fits it in nicely with his script.  A hidden gem from one of Hollywood's most well-known and well-respected directors.

Five Graves to Cairo <----trailer (1943): ***/****