Henri-Georges Clouzot

The Wages of Fear

The Wages of Fear

In a squalid South American oil town, four desperate men sign on for a suicide mission to drive trucks loaded with nitroglycerin over a treacherous mountain route. As they ferry their explosive cargo to a faraway oil fire, each bump and jolt tests their courage, their friendship, and their nerves. The result is one of the greatest thrillers ever committed to celluloid, a white-knuckle ride from France’s legendary master of suspense Henri-Georges Clouzot.

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Film Info

  • France
  • 1953
  • 152 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1:37:1 (4K UHD); 1.33:1 (Blu-ray and DVD)
  • French, Spanish, English, Italian, German
  • Spine #36

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
  • Interviews with assistant director Michel Romanoff and Marc Godin, biographer of director Henri-Georges Clouzot
  • Interview with actor Yves Montand from 1988
  • Henri-Georges Clouzot: The Enlightened Tyrant, a 2004 documentary on the director’s career
  • Censored, an analysis of cuts made to the film for its 1955 U.S. release
  • Program on the film’s 4K restoration
  • Trailers
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by novelist Dennis Lehane and a compilation of interviews with the cast and crew of the film

    New cover by Juan Esteban Rodríguez

Purchase Options

Coming soon, available Mar 4, 2025

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films

Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films

DVD Box Set

50 Discs

$650.00

Out Of Print

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
  • Interviews with assistant director Michel Romanoff and Marc Godin, biographer of director Henri-Georges Clouzot
  • Interview with actor Yves Montand from 1988
  • Henri-Georges Clouzot: The Enlightened Tyrant, a 2004 documentary on the director’s career
  • Censored, an analysis of cuts made to the film for its 1955 U.S. release
  • Program on the film’s 4K restoration
  • Trailers
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by novelist Dennis Lehane and a compilation of interviews with the cast and crew of the film

    New cover by Juan Esteban Rodríguez
The Wages of Fear
Cast
Yves Montand
Mario
Charles Vanel
Jo
Peter Van Eyck
Bimba
William Tubbs
Bill O'Brien
Véra Clouzot
Linda
Folco Lulli
Luigi
Credits
Director
Henri-Georges Clouzot
Screenplay
Henri-Georges Clouzot
Based on the novel by
Georges Arnaud
Screenplay
Jérôme Géronimi
Producer
Louis Wipf
Cinematography
Armand Thirard
Editing
Henri Rust
Editing
Madeleine Gug
Executive producer
Raymond Borderie
Executive producer
Henri-Georges Clouzot
Music
Georges Auric
Sound
William Robert Sivel

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Current

The Wages of Fear: No Exit
The Wages of Fear: No Exit

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s masterpiece stands alone as the purest exercise in cinematic tension ever carved into celluloid.

By Dennis Lehane

Essays — Apr 21, 2009
The Wages of Fear
The Wages of Fear
One of cinema’s most revered thrillers, La Saliare de la Peur or The Wages of Fear is the acknowledged masterpiece of the brilliant French director Henri-Georges Clouzot (1907-77). It is also the film that made popular music hall singer Yves Montan…

By Danny Peary

Essays — Dec 9, 1991
Seventy Years of Cannes: The Wages of Fear in 1953
Seventy Years of Cannes: The Wages of Fear in 1953
To toast the seventieth anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, which has been in full swing since last Wednesday, I’m spending this week looking back on a top-prize winner from each decade of the festival’s history, dishing up details on the fi…

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Explore

Henri-Georges Clouzot

Writer, Director

Henri-Georges Clouzot
Henri-Georges Clouzot

One of the few contemporaries of Hitchcock who gave the Master of Suspense a run for his money, Henri-Georges Clouzot dealt in misanthropic, black-humored tales of greed, jealousy, murder, immorality, and revenge. Though perhaps best known for 1955’s Gothic noir Diabolique, one of the most influential thrillers of all time and a film that Hitchcock himself admired (and wished to outdo), Clouzot first made his mark in French cinema in the 1940s. His politically charged, 1943 Le corbeau was a highly controversial story of a poison-pen letter that uncovers the dirty secrets of an entire town; viewed in retrospect, it’s Clouzot’s first important statement on the corruption of community. Subsequent Clouzot films would be built on the same theme in different milieus: the entertainment underworld of Quai des Orfèvres, the mercenary imperialism of the white-knuckle adventure The Wages of Fear. Once widely misunderstood—the director was charged with Nazi sympathies for Le corbeau and was derided by the French New Wave—the work of Henri-Georges Clouzot today looks far ahead of its time.

More Henri-Georges Clouzot