You drive, I worry

I've been totally enjoying all the Criterion content on Netflix and Hulu+ lately. I watch bits of movies whenever I get a few minutes and I've seen a few good ones lately. Netflix has some, and Hulu is adding the entire Criterion catalog.

Yesterday I stayed home from work #1 to do some work #2 and somewhere in there I got to take the time to watch The Wages of Fear which is an excellent 1953 French movie directed by the great Henri-Georges Clouzot.

The Wages of Fear is the story of four desperate unemployed men who have found themselves deep in some poor South American country with no way to get the money together to get back to their original homes (France, Italy, The Netherlands...). They take a very dangerous job that will either make them rich or kill them all.

A US oil company ("There are Americans here?" ... "Where there is oil, there are Americans") has had a drilling accident and a huge fire is raging at a well some 300 miles from the town the men are located. The company needs drivers to transport a few hundred gallons of nitro glycerin along the old pot-holed, washboard roads to the well where they will be used to blow the fire out. If you know anything about nitro glycerin, it's very unstable and any sudden jolt or too much heat will cause it to explode. A drop of this stuff makes a pretty big bang. A few hundred gallons of it, well...

So the movie is really an intense study of fear and what it can do to the mind. These drivers have constant, unrelenting thoughts about what it would be like to be blown to bits and cease to exist in the blink of an eye (the oil company boss has told them they carry so much nitro that if it went off there wouldn't be enough of them or their truck left to pick up).

As the story progresses the fear starts to get to each man in his own way. Some hide it behind sarcasm or quietness, some start to crack up. But it affects them all. When one man complains that he's doing all the driving while a second man just sits in the seat next to him and will get the same money for the job, the second man notes that the situation is "like a division of labor, I do the worrying so you can do the driving".

I won't spoil the movie because you really should see it, but rest assured it's got some moments that will stay with you. It makes me sad that this kind of movie is all but extinct today. Thanks to the people of Criterion for restoring and presenting these great old films to new generations. I hope they watch.