Here’s one for the real film fans and Letterboxd lovers: there’s a new 4K restoration of The Wages Of Fear, the 1953 classic from French filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot. Janus Films will screen the movie, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, in New York at Film Forum from November 27 to December 5, with additional screenings in San Francisco (beginning December 13) and Los Angeles (beginning December 20). But you can get a taste of the restoration from the new trailer that showcases the ratcheting tension in every frame.
For those unfamiliar, the synopsis is as follows: “In a squalid South American oil town, four desperate men sign on for a suicide mission to drive trucks loaded with nitroglycerin over a treacherous mountain route. As they ferry their explosive cargo to a faraway oil fire, each bump and jolt tests their courage, their friendship, and their nerves. The result is one of the greatest thrillers ever committed to celluloid, a white-knuckle ride from France’s legendary master of suspense, Henri-Georges Clouzot.”
The Wages Of Fear trailer combines the film’s classic look with a modern sensibility (watch the Janus Films logo disappear as a truck slowly pulls into frame). As the crew delicately navigates transporting its delicate, deadly haul, you can’t help but flinch at every snap of a match, to say nothing of the even greater obstacles encountered on the road. A sheen of sweat covers every man’s brow as they make their perilous journey; as one says, “When you ask for trouble, it always comes.”
The beautiful and fearsome scenery has had a lasting impact on cinema. William Friedkin took his own turn with the material in his 1977 film Sorcerer. There was also a not-particularly-well-received Netflix remake just the year from Julien Leclercq (Ganglands). Perhaps more significantly, Christopher Nolan—quoted in the trailer as calling the film a “masterpiece of suspense”—cited it as a direct inspiration for his Oscar-nominated historical thriller, Dunkirk. “It’s a very edgy movie, it has a very dark ending,” he said in 2023. “I’d been watching a series of films to try and figure out, ‘Okay, what could help us? What could tell us something?’ And this was the one that has the process, the tension of detail.”
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