The Wages of Fear

The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la peur, 1953) is a French-Italian thriller you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. Adapted from Georges Arnaud's novel, it stars a young Yves Montand in the role that made his name abroad.

In a sun-baked dead-end town somewhere in Latin America, drifters from across the world are stranded with no money and no way out. Then an American oil company makes an offer: two thousand dollars to each man who drives a truckload of nitroglycerin three hundred miles to a blazing well. One pothole, one hard jolt, and there is nothing left of the driver. Four desperate men take the job, among them Montand's Mario and the broken-down Jo, played by Charles Vanel.

Clouzot stretches the road to the breaking point: rotten planks over a ravine, a pool of crude oil, a boulder that has to be cleared. The tension is physical, almost unbearable to sit through. The film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and the Golden Bear in Berlin, and it still ranks among the great suspense films ever made. Stream The Wages of Fear (1953) online on iFILM.