Reward for fear
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Reward for fear |
| Original title | Le salaire de la peur |
| Country of production |
France , Italy |
| original language |
French , English , German , Spanish , Italian |
| Publishing year | 1953 |
| length | 148 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Henri-Georges Clouzot |
| script | Henri-Georges Clouzot Jérôme Géronimi |
| production | Henri-Georges Clouzot |
| music | Georges Auric |
| camera | Armand Thirard |
| cut |
Madeleine Gug Etiennette Muse Henri Rust |
| occupation | |
| |
The Wages of Fear (original title: Le salaire de la peur) is in black and white turned feature film by Henri-Georges Clouzot from the year 1953 with Yves Montand , Charles Vanel and Peter van Eyck in the lead roles. The French - Italian co-production is based on the novel of the same name by Georges Arnaud . Dramaturgically, the film belongs to the genres of (psycho-) drama and thriller with links to the road movie .
action
In Las Piedras, a South American village, which is US - oil company Southern Oil Company (SOC) of the only remaining major employers. Stranded adventurers and casual workers from the USA and Europe gather here .
Than at a 500 km Anm1 remote oil well of the SOC breaks a devastating fire that can only be cleared by the blast targeted explosion, the company offers a high premium for the transport of nitroglycerine from the depot to the oil well. A daring undertaking, because the wagons are not equipped for such transport, the route is mountainous and the roads are in poor condition. Nevertheless, numerous men apply because they see it as their last chance for a better life.
Two teams of two are selected and set off separately from each other: on the one hand the young Corsican Mario and the aging Frenchman Jo, on the other hand the German Bimba and the Italian construction worker Luigi. Every vehicle is loaded with the required amount of explosives, the loss of a vehicle is factored in.
On the way with the highly explosive charge, a piece of corrugated iron road has to be tackled, a tight curve in a mountain pass requires pushing back on a makeshift wooden ramp, and a large rock blocks the road and has to be blown away. The adventure lets the daring Mario blossom, while the older Jo turns out to be a mouthful and coward, which leads to violent arguments between the two.
From a distance, Jo and Mario finally see the explosion of the car in front with Bimba and Luigi. While crossing the resulting crater, which is filled with crude oil from a damaged pipeline , Jo is run over by Mario and dies shortly before the goal of the consequences of his leg injury. Mario is the only one to reach the destination with his cargo and collapses, exhausted.
The next day, Mario receives a check for double the fee, his own and that of the deceased Jo. He is offered a driver for the return trip to Las Piedras, but insists on driving himself. While the village dances to the sound of a waltz after a phone call and Linda faints, Mario is seized with euphoria and drives serpentine lines on the narrow mountain track until he loses control of the car, falls down a steep slope and is killed in the process.
background
production
The role of Jo was initially offered to Jean Gabin , who refused to portray a "coward".
Filming began on August 27, 1951; The plan was nine weeks, but numerous problems delayed production. In the south of France an unusually large amount of rain fell that year, so that vehicles sank in the mud, cranes overturned and the film set was in part unusable. Director Clouzot broke an ankle and his wife Véra fell ill. Two soldiers of the French army, from the 7e régiment du génie (engineer regiment) in Avignon, who were building a makeshift bridge over the Gardon river , drowned during the work. Production quickly exceeded budgeted costs. At the end of November, only half of the film was finished, but filming was suspended for six months due to the short winter days. The second half was then completed in the summer of 1952.
The film was shot entirely in the south of France. Originally the film was to be shot in Spain , but Yves Montand and his then-wife Simone Signoret refused to work there while Franco's regime was in power.
The scenes in the bamboo forest were shot in the Bambouseraie de Prafrance near Anduze, the scene on the wooden ramp in the Gardon gorge north of the village of Poulx, not far from Nîmes.
The final scene, in which Yves Montand slalom in high spirits, combines views of the D979 (Nîmes – Arles), a paved road, and the gravel road north of Poulx ( 43 ° 56 ′ 7 ″ N , 4 ° 25 ′ 50.5 ″ O ) leads down into the gorge. The remains of the truck that actually fell into the ravine for filming, namely the cabin, are still there. Shortly before the end of the street there was also the wooden ramp, which no longer exists, but its foundations and rope attachments are. The palm trees and large cacti seen in the film were brought to the film set in pots or were simply made of sheet metal (silhouette). The vegetation actually present in the limestone gorge is dominated by shrubs called garigues . Other parts were shot in the Camargue , where the oil rigs were also built. The village of Las Piedras was built near Arles on the site of the former concentration camp "Camp de Saliers". The oil rigs in the handkerchief scene were wells east of Courbessac.
The trucks used are, in contrast to the " International KB-7" explicitly mentioned in the novel , a 1943 Dodge T110 (Luigi and Bimba) and a White 666 (Mario and Jo). The 666 (= 6 tons payload, six-wheel all-wheel drive / the film vehicle has a total of 10 wheels due to twin tires on the rear axles; the film vehicle also lacks the cardan shaft to the front axle) was built for the American military in large numbers. For the film premiere, several trucks of these types were similarly equipped (front grill, painting, lettering) and driven around for advertising purposes.
Film start
Henri-Georges Clouzot said on the occasion of the preview of his film:
“No, I am really not in a position to see 'The Wages of Fear' as a viewer or even as a critic. The audience is on one side of the screen and we are on the other and we are unable to switch places. The sixteen rolls of film that are about to be projected are there in a corner of the projection room. It took two years of work and sometimes - why should I keep it quiet? - tremendous power. More than a hundred colleagues did their best to achieve this. As far as I know, there is and has not been a team in the history of French cinema that has worked more conspiratorially, enthusiastically and doggedly than the one that has supported and sometimes driven me during these long months. Despite rain, cold, floods, diseases and the permanent risk of accidents, these people captured the film piece by piece, meter by meter, which you are about to see. "
The film premiered on April 22, 1953 at the Cannes International Film Festival . The first performance in the FRG took place on September 11, 1953, in the GDR on September 27, 1957. On German television, Lohn der Angst was first seen on January 13, 1973 on ARD .
Different versions
The German theatrical version was around 20 minutes shorter than the original version. Various dialogue and action scenes have been shortened, including the suicide of a rejected candidate for the driver's job. The first drive through dangerous terrain, referred to in the film as "corrugated iron", has also been streamlined. It was not until 2003 that the missing scenes were integrated and dubbed for a television broadcast by ZDF .
The film was also severely shortened when it premiered in the USA, where allegedly “ anti-American ” scenes were offended. In 1991 the film was shown there in full length for the first time.
German synchronization
The German dubbed version was created in 1953 in the studios of the 'International Film Union' in Remagen (script and director: Georg Rothkegel). In 2003, the scenes that had been missing up to then were dubbed by Bavaria Film (written and directed by Michael Nowka ).
| role | actor | Voice actor 1953 | Voice actor 2003 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mario | Yves Montand | Howard Vernon | Udo Schenk |
| Yo | Charles Vanel | Walther Suessenguth | Wolfgang Völz |
| Bimba | Peter van Eyck | Peter van Eyck | Peer Augustinski |
| Luigi | Folco Lulli | Werner Lieven | Engelbert von Nordhausen |
| Linda | Véra Clouzot | Lola Luigi | Monica Bielenstein |
| O'Brien | William Tubbs | Wolf Martini | Charles Rettinghaus |
| Smerloff | Jo Dest | Kurt Meister | |
| Hernandez | Dario Moreno | Hans Walter Clasen | Thomas Nero Wolff |
Aftermath
1977 US director William Friedkin filmed the book under the title Breathless before fear .
Reviews
“The subject of fear of death, interpreted existentially here, has been designed with extraordinary artistic ability. Worth seeing for adults. "
“This film is without a ray of hope on the human. As brilliantly as it may be designed and then managed - it is basically inhumane. "
"A classic of demanding suspense cinema, at the same time a shocking drama of human fear and humiliation, whose heroes - sentimental cynics and soft-hearted bully - are portrayed with a rare intensity."
“Precision and scarcity are the distinctive features of this masterpiece of suspense cinema. [...] Using less precise details, Clouzot not only knows how to characterize the characters convincingly, but also to advance the action and let the viewer experience it intensely. "
Awards
- Grand Prize of the Festival (forerunner of the Golden Palm ) for Henri-Georges Clouzot
- “Honorable Mention” from the jury to Charles Vanel for his performance
- Prix Méliès 1954
- Best Film 1955
- Blue Ribbon Award, Tokyo (ブ ル ー リ ボ ン, Burū Ribon Shō)
- Best Foreign Language Film 1955.
DVD and Blu-ray
Wages of Fear is available worldwide on DVD and was released on Blu-ray in the USA in 2009 .
literature
-
Georges Arnaud : Le Salaire de la peur. Julliard, 1950.
- German first edition: Charge of nitroglycerine. Translated from the French by Hubertus Foerster. Biederstein, Munich 1951.
- German reprint: Wages of Fear. Goldmann, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-442-11589-2 .
- Joshua Klein: A reward for fear. In: Steven Jay Schneider (Ed.): 1001 films. Edition Olms, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-283-00497-8 , p. 287.
Web links
- Wages of Fear in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- Wages of Fear atRotten Tomatoes(English)
- Review by René Malgo on Filmstarts.de
- Private homepage for the film
- 3rd Berlin International Film Festival on Berlinale.de
- Description of the cars used in the film (French)
Individual evidence
- ^ Danny Peary: The Wages of Fear. Essay on the Criterion Collection website , accessed October 25, 2012.
- ^ History of the 666 in David Doyle: Standard Catalog of US Military Vehicles. 2nd Edition. Krause Publications, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4402-2799-8 , pp. 208 ff.
- ^ Reward for Fear in the Internet Movie Database .
- ↑ a b The reward of fear. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed November 3, 2018 . .
- ↑ Comparison of the cut versions VHS / cinema - DVD from Lohn der Angst at Schnittberichte.com .
- ^ Dennis Lehane: The Wages of Fear: No Exit. Essay on the Criterion Collection website , accessed October 24, 2012.
- ↑ The reward of fear. at: synchronkartei.de , accessed on May 11, 2012.
- ↑ Protestant film observer. Review No. 464/1953.
- ^ Review in Die Neue Zeitung. 1953, quoted in the entry for the 3rd Berlin International Film Festival on Berlinale.de
- ^ Günter Engelhard, Walter Schobert, Horst Schäfer: 111 masterpieces of film. Das Video-Privatmuseum, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt 1989, ISBN 3-596-24497-8 .
- ↑ Short review of Arnaud's novel in Der Spiegel. No. 2/1952 of January 9, 1952, accessed May 11, 2012.