Jan. 10 movie: The Wages of Fear. Very good, extremely tense film by Henri-Georges Clouzot, director of Diabolique (another brilliant thriller) and The Mystery of Picasso (which isn't tense at all, but is very very good. It's a documentary of live footage of Picasso at work, using special canvases and ink, with the camera on the other side of the canvas. So the paintings seem to appear of their own accord. [Midway through the film Picasso gets tired of the inks and switches to oils, and from then on they use stop-motion to show the paintings develop.] We coincidentally saw it a couple of weeks ago, and didn't realize it was the same director as this film until Robert Osborne said so). Anyway, The Wages of Fear is about Yves Montand and three other guys driving two trucks full of nitrogylcerin through rural South America. Do they make it? Well, this is a French film.
You know that scene about two-thirds of the way through The African Queen where everyone passes out, thoroughly defeated, and then the camera pulls back to show that they've almost made it? I remember Sean saying a long time ago that if it was a French movie, that would have been the end. The Wages of Fear makes me understand that remark. It wasn't easy to watch, but I enjoyed it immensely. (And managed not to have nightmares about rotten bridges or pits of mud and oil! woo hoo!) I heard there was a 70's Hollywood remake but I couldn't find it on imdb.com. I hope it's not as stupid as the remake of Diabolique.
Speaking of Diabolique, Osborne said that it earned Clouzot the nickname "the French Hitchcock." Which apparently irritated Hitchcock because he had tried to buy the rights to Diabolique, but Clouzot got to it first by only a few hours. I wonder what Diabolique would have been like if Hitchcock had directed it? It already had the icy blonde and the humiliation of women; Clouzot was halfway there.
I remember the climax of Diabolique as one of the most shocking things (in the sense of surprising, not outrageous) I've ever seen in the movies. When I realized what was happening my jaw literally fell open. It's such a shame that movie advertising techniques rob the movies of their capacity to surprise. Why do they want us to know everything about a movie before we see it? It makes no sense.
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The remake of "The Wages of Fear" is called "Sorcerer." I don't have any idea why.