The Wages of Fear (1953), directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.
At first the setting seems to be one of those decaying colonial African outposts from a Graham Greene novel. We soon see it is actually an oil town in South America, but with the same dirt streets, scrap metal shanties and morning vultures in the road.
Shady, lazy multi-national drifters have landed there and can't get away. Earn money in construction? No: "We work with our brains", which means not at all.
It is a cruel, brutal, exploitative place. When an oil well explodes the damned Company cares nothing for the deaths, they just need drivers for a well-paid suicide mission to deliver nitroglycerin to the site which will somehow blow out the conflagration.
It is a nightmarish, white-knuckle driving job. Never has the tension of traction been so well shown in a film, the difficulty of negotiating rough roads and impossible corners.
We come to understand that the money is just an excuse. It gives the men permission to do something so crazy. They would deny that.
Camaraderie? Not much, but some.
Our drivers:
Corsican Yves Montand -- Le Cercle Rouge (1970) -- a young man who fancies himself as some sort of player.
Older French gangster Charles Vanel, good at bullying people, not so brave on the road.
Italian Folco Lulli, the happiest member of the crew, even though he is already dying from lungs full of cement dust.
German Peter van Eyck -- Run for the Sun (1956) -- stoic and brave.
The young woman at the café, dog-like in her devotion to the uncaring Montand, is Véra Clouzot, the director's wife, next seen in Diabolique (1955).
Notes:
This is an important entry in the "trucker noir" genre. Others: Thieves' Highway (1949), They Drive By Night (1940), The Long Haul (1957).
"Hauling nitro over rough roads" became it's own little film genre. William Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977) is another adaptation of the original novel.
Long setup in the town: it is 40m until the oil-well blows, an hour before the trucks roll.
The American oil-men are the chief villains. Note they live on Coca-Cola.
To keep from detonating the cargo you drive slow through the mud-holes but fast to fly over the washboard.
Just as is done today, roadside crosses mark places where people have died. Theirs are iron.
Only in the movies: drilling a 30" hole in solid rock by pounding on it with an iron rod.
Georges Auric score. Photographed by Armand Thirard, who also did the director's Diabolique (1955) and La Vérité (1960).
Available on Blu-ray from Criterion.