The Wages of Fear (1953)

"In Which Four Men Drive Two Lorries Filled With 200 Gallons of Nitroglycerine Across A Lot Of Very Bumpy Roads"

After its 2017 DVD & Blu-ray release from the same label, Henri-Georges Clouzot's masterpiece gets a 4K UHD release from the BFI.

In a dead end village in South America, four men decide to risk their lives to try and earn enough money for them to escape. They are Mario (Yves Montand), Jo (Charles Vanel), Bimba (Peter van Eyck) and Luigi (Folco Lulli). When oil drilling by an American company ("Wherever there's oil there's Americans" says Luigi in one of the lines cut for the original US release of this one) results in an increasingly uncontrollable fire, the only thing that can put it out are multiple timed explosions to cap it. Unfortunately the nitro-glycerine needed to do this is some distance away, is unstable, and the only way to get it there is over treacherous rounds in two trucks with little suspension.

Clocking in at 153 minutes, the first hour of THE WAGES OF FEAR is given over to establishing the main characters and the town they have found themselves stuck in. William Friedkin's 1977 remake SORCERER spends some time going deeper into each man's backstory, but here we stay in the village and that works fine. Once the lorries are underway the film becomes superbly tense, with absolutely no let up until the final shot.

The BFI's UHD disc in 4K (2160p) in HDR compatible Dolby Vision. All the extras from the previous Blu-ray release have been carried over, including Adrian Martin commentary, interviews with assistant director Michel Romanoff, Clouzit biographer Marc Godin and Professor Lucy Mazdon (68 minutes in all) and the Guardian Lecture with Yves Montand.

New to the UHD disc are a new 13 minute video essay by Nic Wassell, and 30 minutes of 'Treasures From the BFI National Archive'. These include THEY TAKE THE HIGH ROAD (24 minutes) about cement transport in Scotland in 1960. It's a beautifully preserved colour film featuring a number of classic lorries from the period including AECs, ERFs and Leylands. If you're into that then you'll also want to watch the five minute silent short about Thornycroft all-terrain six wheelers. Finally there's a snippet (32 seconds) of an oil fire checked by explosives from 1928.

Henri-Georges Clouzot's THE WAGES OF FEAR is out on 4K UHD from the BFI on Monday 19th February 2024