I’m sorry but last night I gave Henri-Georges Clouzot‘s The Wages of Fear (’53) another viewing, and I came away fully convinced that it’s a slightly lesser achievement than William Friedkin‘s financially calamitous remake, titled Sorcerer (’77). And here’s why:
(1) The first hour of Fear has no urgency or narrative drive. It’s just about the four main characters — Mario (Yves Montand), Jo (Charles Vanel), Luigi (Folco Lulli) and Bimba (Peter van Eyck) — bellyaching about being stuck in the South American town of Las Piedras, which doesn’t look South American at all (pic was shot in the flatlands of southern France), and is certainly not mountainous or jungle-y. The first hour is basically a lighthearted hangout film.
(2) The first hour of the Freidkin version has much more punch and texture, largely due to the riveting backstories of the four main characters — Roy Scheider‘s Jackie Scanlon, Bruno Cremer‘s Victor Manzon, Francisco Rabal‘s Nilo, and Amidou‘s Kassem.
(3) Sorcerer‘s South American shanty town, called Porvenir, also delivers a much more engrossing atmosphere of grit, grime and hand-to-mouth poverty than Fear‘s Piedras, which is all interiors and without much atmosphere (i.e., surrounded by arid flatlands).
(4) In The Wages of Fear, Véra Clouzot‘s Linda, a barefoot cantina worker and Mario’s devoted admirer (lover?), serves no narrative purpose. All she does, really, is smile nonsensically and bat her eyelashes at the camera. (She was the director’s wife, of course — he obviously indulged her and let her do whatever.)
(5) Fear kicks in, of course, once the men begin their journey in the two trucks. This portion of the film is superbly paced, shot, framed, edited. And yet it doesn’t have Sorcerer‘s rickety bridge-crossing scene in the rain and over the raging rapids. Clouzot didn’t have much of a budget — Friedkin spent around $22 million in 1977 dollars, or roughly $125 million in today’s economy.
(6) Both teams have to use nitroglycerine to eliminate a dirt-road blockage (a massive stone in Fear, a fallen tree in Sorcerer), and yet the circumstance that leads to Van Eyck and Lulli’s truck detonating and blowing them to smithereens isn’t shown — an interesting decision on Clouzot’s part, but was it primarily a financial one? It feels like a bit of a cheat. The viewer naturally wants to know what happened.
(7) Montand’s truck-crash death at the end of Fear is caused by his character being in a great, jaunty mood, and is therefore a bit careless. This, I feel, is a bit of a careless ending. It reminded me of a story my dad told me about a guy he met in an AA meeting…a guy whose bumpy life took a joyful turn for the better, which put him into such a happy frame of mind that he started drinking again.