The Wages of Fear (1953, PG)

(Le salaire de la peur) Dir: Henri-Georges Clouzot, France, 141mins, 35mm

Yves Montand and Charles Vanel lead an ensemble of desperate and damned Euro-trash, contracted to drive a truck load of unstable explosives across an anonymous, blighted South American country to cap an out-of-control oil well. Clouzot’s Cannes Film Festival winning and most successful film fused the Combat, Western and Road movie genres together, packed it with an explosive metaphor for colonialist and rat-race capitalism, then lights the fuse with hyper-alpha masculinity.

Courtesy of l’Institut Français and presented with the support of the Embassy of France.