The Wages of Fear (1953)

The Wages of Fear is an Italian/French co-production that won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The first hour or so of the film follows a group of expatriates of varying backgrounds, poor and stranded in Venezuela, having come for the promise of wealth and now just eking by without enough money to go back to their homelands. Now a little of this seems to go a long way and after about an hour you've had your fill and are wondering what was the point, that become clear in the last 90 or so minutes of the movie. You needed that first part to establish the desperate need of the these people for money, for a chance to escape, and for the languid pace to serve as effective counterpoint to the consistent tension of the rest of film. In short it helps to explain why these people would take on the extremely dangerous job of transporting nitroglycerin across long stretches of rough terrain. The American oil company S.O.C. had a well catch fire some distance from the village in which the beginning of the story is set, and now needs to transport the nitroglycerin from there to here in order to collapse the well and stop the fire, then they can re-dig the well and get back to production. Four desperate men on two trucks are selected to make the drive, and they could all blow up at any moment. A unique thriller with touches of neorealism, it's a really nerve wracking something. ****