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Select media
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Stills must not be reproduced, copied or downloaded in any way.
Film details
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Featuring
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Director
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Countries
France Italy
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Year
1953
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Genres
Crime Thriller Drama
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Type
Film
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Category
Fiction
Alternative titles
- The Wages of Fear Alternative
- Il salario della paura Alternative Italian
- Vite vendute Alternative Italian
Introduction
“The characteristics of the people are not the absorbing thing in this film. The excitement derives entirely from the awareness of nitroglycerine and the gingerly, breathless handling of it. You sit there waiting for the theatre to explode.”
Bosley Crowther, New York Times, 1955
Few films are as gripping as The Wages of Fear, largely because few have come up with as effective a mechanism for generating pure white-knuckle tension. In an unnamed South American country, four European ex-convicts are so desperate to escape that they accept the potentially suicidal mission of driving two trucks loaded with nitroglycerine over the roughest terrain imaginable in order to extinguish a burning oil well – assuming their own lives aren’t extinguished first.
The slow build-up gives Henri-Georges Clouzot time to round his characters – cynical Yves Montand, grizzled Charles Vanel, rugged Peter Van Eyck, nervy Folco Lulli – and establish how lethal a single drop of ‘nitro’ can be when jolted. And then the trucks leave the town, warning sirens blaring, whereupon Clouzot begins to slice at the viewer’s nerve endings with the clinical precision of a master surgeon, and doesn’t let up until the characteristically pessimistic ending.
The film was directly remade as Violent Road (1958) and Sorcerer (1977), and its influence can clearly be seen in Speed (1994).
Cast & Credits
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Cast
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Mario
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Jo
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Bimba
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chief of 'Boss' camp
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.
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Bernardo
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Smerloff
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Hernandez
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.
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.
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O'Brien
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Linda
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Luigi
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[]
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[]
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[]
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[Dick]
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[]
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[]
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Credits
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Direction:
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Director
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Assistant Director
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Italian Assistant Director
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Script Supervisor
Production:
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Production Company
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Production Company
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Production Company
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Production Company
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Executive Producer
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Executive Producer
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[Producer]
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Unit Production Manager
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Unit Production Manager
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Unit Manager
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Unit Manager
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Unit Manager
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Production Manager
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General Administration
Writing:
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Adaptation/Dialogue
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Adaptation/Dialogue
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Based on the novel by
Photography:
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Director of Photography
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Camera Operator
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Cameraman
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Cameraman
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Assistant Camera Operator
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Assistant Camera Operator
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Assistant Camera Operator
Stills:
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Stills Photography
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Stills Photography
Editing:
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Editor
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Editor
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Editor
Design:
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Art Director
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Assistant Art Director
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Assistant Art Director
Costumes:
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[Costumes]
Make-up:
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Make-up
Music:
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Music
Sound:
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Sound
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Sound Assistant
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Sound Assistant
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The Greatest Films of All Time 2012
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