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by Sam Christian, Staff Writer

Film noir casts a wide net in terms of what films are or are not noir. Noir is ubiquitous yet somehow ephemeral. There are many different film elements which make a noir. There are certain plot details, mostly centered around crime, sometimes they include the overall cynicism of American life post WWII, there’s classic character tropes like the private detectives and Femme Fatales, and the cinematography usually pulls from German expressionism comprising of dark, exaggerated shadows. A movie can comprise all, some or even one of these elements and some would classify them as noir. Paul Schrader’s 1972 essay Notes on Film Noir says that “every critic has their own definition of film noir”, and I’m no different, let’s look at Henri-George Cluzot’s The Wages of Fear (1953) and find out if it is a noir or something different.

The Wages of Fear takes place in an unnamed South American oil town, where we meet a small cadre of Europeans, all either small time crooks or former workers of the Oil Company, all of which are stuck in the town due to the exorbitant prices of tickets for the airplane which is the only transportation out of town. The first half of the movie follows two of the Europeans expats, two Frenchman, Mario (Yves Montand) and Mr. Jo (Charles Vanel). As we get to know them, we also get to know the town, which is incredibly poor, with a scant of slums, dirt roads and beggars in the street all of which are at the border of a well maintained walled off American oil companies’ compound, where the American workers live and work separated from the locals. Clouzot shows the harsh realities of living in a town being ravaged by foreign extraction industries, which are prevalent even today in large swaths of the global south. While following Mr. Jo and Mario around town, there are scenes showing the discontent and ire of the locals towards the Americans and the company, where scene after scene shows workers being sent back into town on stretchers with life-threatening injuries suffered from working in the oil fields. One of these accidents was a gas explosion at an oil derrick 300 miles from town, causing a huge plume of fire inextinguishable by normal firefighting means. 

Clouzot spends time with the American managers of the oil company deciding how to deal with the endless fire. They settle on placing explosive charges of nitro glycerin at the base of the flame to cause an explosion and douse the fire. The Committee of managers—like managers do—assign the task of transporting the deadly cargo to those the company deems expendable; they certainly aren’t going to do the task themselves, and they complain about how if the job goes to the local workers there would be a revolt in town. Who else would be desperate enough to go on a suicide mission but the Europeans desperate to leave the town? The company settles on Mr. Jo, Mario, a German named Bimba and an Italian, Luigi to drive the trucks through the jungle. This is where the noir ends almost completely, and the suspense begins.

The second half of the movie is possibly the most suspenseful sequence in history and where the film almost completely strays from a noir tone. The rest of the film follows the two trucks through the jungle on bumpy dirt roads where one wrong move means instant annihilation. Clouzot executes suspense perfectly. The entire time whether the men are actively driving or not you never know what will set off the nitro glycerin. There are scenes when the car is fully parked, and the men are arguing about driving tactics as to not blow up their cargo while smoking next to the truck which has the huge NO SMOKING sign painted right on the side. The movie causes constant anxiety throughout the remainder of the runtime. The reason why earlier I mentioned that the film almost abandons noir completely is because there are still filmic elements of noir, there are still strong shadows in the cinematography of the bamboo forest scenes, and the ending oil derrick scenes, but there’s still one noir element that remains, that is the constant cynical outlook of the characters driving the trucks.  

The main thematic element of noir is usually a cynical outlook on the state of America, primarily set in the grimy underbellies of the cities in the US and primarily showing people at some sort of rock bottom looking to change their situation through some small-time crime to change their situation.  What's interesting about The Wages of Fear is that it is as cynical as any American noir but instead of the locality of the gritty urban backdrop Clouzot interestingly places our protagonists in the very real world of neocolonialism in the global south. The characters also feel like there is nowhere to turn in correcting their lives except going on a suicide mission at the behest of a corporation who quite literally doesn’t value human life over the profit they’re extracting from the very earth of the global south. 

While the thread of cynicism runs throughout The Wages of Fear, I would still hesitate in calling this film a proper noir. I would more classify this a thriller that more so delves into sociopolitical and economic themes that would be closer associated to films that tackle labor rights in extractive industries like Salt of the Earth (1954) and even later films about the plight of occupied peoples like in The Battle of Algiers (1966) and almost feels more like an Italian Neorealist film more than a Noir proper. The only noticeable difference in Wages of Fear is that Clouzot—while showing how neocolonialism causes underdevelopment in the small villages of the global south and represents the people of the town being hurt by extractive industries: the film mostly focusses on the outsider misfits brought into the country by neocolonial forces, who do have the possibility of escape, despite the unlikelihood of the situation. Overall, this is one of the greatest films of all time. While the movie does have one major noir element amongst a light spattering of others, I would still be hard pressed to classify the movie as a noir; but it sits—like so many movies—in the chiaroscuro grey area that noir thrives.