A bridge too far
You hear the debate at the fringes of socmed discussion: "Which is the better film, Henri-George Clouzot's black-and-white thriller or William Friedkin's $22 million tribute/remake?" Well let me tell you--
(WARNING-- plot twists discussed in explicit detail!)
When Friedkin scored a double success with The French Connection and The Exorcist, Hollywood couldn't help but take notice (French made $75 million and won the Best Picture Oscar, The Exorcist was only nominated but earned $441 million). Friedkin declared his next project would not be a remake of Clouzot's 1953 picture but would use the same basic premise (two trucks carrying touchy explosives over rough South American roads) with a 'grittier' more 'documentary feel.'
Friedkin asked, and Friedkin got it. I remember seeing this back in '77 or '78 as a youth of 11 or 12, and being startled at the sheer squalor; I wondered if perhaps Friedkin had filmed in Manila-- the scattered wet garbage, the pools of fetid water, the mud and feces, the scabied dogs (of course Lino Brocka captured similar imagery in Insiang, but this was a Hollywood director, from the United States!). What the director achieved in those opening images was extraordinary, I thought, and are easily the best passages in the film.
Takes a while to get going too. We get the four main characters' backstories, where they came from, what drove them to seek refuge in this rectum of a small town; Clouzot did indulge in a lengthy introduction of his characters but in town and not flashback, already interacting with each other-- not only do we get the same amount of backstory (in brief snatches of conversation with each other) but we get the others' reactions to said backstory, the sense of camaraderie generated when sharing bits of their past. At one point Bimba (Peter van Eyck) gingerly pours a cup of nitroglycerine into a hole, to blow up a big rock; the others remark on his steady hands, and he mentions working in Nazi salt mines during the war-- compared to that, he claims, this is nothing.
Friedkin declared he wanted an 'unsentimental' film, but with that comes less emotional investment-- Bimba, Luigi (Folco Lulli), Jo (Charles Vanel), and Mario (Yves Montand) are far more engaging folk than Victor (Bruno Cremer), Nilo (Francisco Rabal), and Jackie Scanlon (Roy Scheider); I submit that it matters more when Clouzot's drivers are put in peril, suffer, snarl and snap back at each other.
I'd call Amidou's Kassem the remake's noted exception: Amidou is excellent here and you're immediately won over by his underdog expression and can-do spirit. Scheider coming off his equally huge double success of The French Connection and Jaws acts more like the standard Hollywood star, complete with obligatory freakout scene (takes a machete and desperately tries to clear an alternate route through the jungle) designed to win him an acting nomination (he doesn't get it).
The thrills also hit different-- have not read Georges Arnaud's novel of the same name but I'm assuming Clouzot follows the general outline fairly closely. There's a greater variety to the dangers the drivers are subject to, more precision in the way Clouzot establishes each obstacle and how they're overcome (you imagine the film's alternate title could be 8 Million Ways to Die). Coming up to the corrugated road, the two teams explain to one another the problem: takes too long to safely cross on second gear so the only solution is to speed up-- to fly over the corrugations at an insanely counterintuitive forty miles an hour, and right then and there the audience feels its collective sphincter squeeze when Clouzot cuts to a foot pressing on a gas pedal, the engine roaring-- you expect the next sound to be two hundred liters of nitroglycerine going up in flames.
That's one problem with the road; Clouzot brilliantly suggests the second as he intercuts between the two teams laying out the no-margin no-error solution, arriving at the same answer independently. What happens then when chance changes circumstances, and to warn the other truck of the change one must rely on a message conveyed by a single white handkerchief laid on the road?
By way of contrast there's not much thrill to remake; after spending almost an hour introducing each character we don't get any real hazards until the rope bridge stretched across the river, where Friedkin pours all his considerable filmmaking skills-- and a good chunk of the budget-- on the pair of trucks crossing said river, in the middle of a tropical monsoon.
Take a moment to note that Friedkin's much vaunted 'realism' isn't, really; we're asked to believe that the oil company, needing the explosives transported quickly and safely, won't spend a peso giving the four drivers the best trucks and mechanics that corporate resources can buy (the drivers have to waste time customizing their own vehicles). We're also asked to watch the trucks with their great goofy gap-toothed smiles seriously, without once laughing, or believe multi-ton trucks can cross a rope bridge with nary a supporting steel cable in sight (not to mention the fraying suspension ropes are too far apart, and the bridge's planking looks suspiciously spaced like in an amusement park ride, for maximum apparent danger). Yes Friedkin pours plenty of verite-like style into the images but if you pause to think (which admittedly with the rain and assaultive sounds it can be hard to do) it's difficult to take the situation seriously.
I can see what Friedkin must have been aiming for: by sharing each driver's stories with us the audience and not with the other drivers, the filmmaker turns the four men into four distinct narratives, isolated not by time or distance but by the sheer alienating nature of modern life. The focus on Scanlon in particular is telling: he gets the longest flashback, most of the story is seen through his eyes; he also enjoys the film's showiest setpiece-- not the infamous bridge-crossing during a rainstorm but the final odyssey through surreal desert landscapes (in a South American jungle?), with Friedkin abandoning Ecuador to shoot in Navajo territory, in New Mexico. Scanlon has to walk the flat mesa alone, surrounded by towering silent stone figures, the synthesizer score of Tangerine Dream filling his head-- it's the ultimate Sartrean trek, who wouldn't crack under that kind of punishment?
The sequence is impressive if not easy to love (I admit to admiring it) but not quite what Clouzot offers in Wages. There fellow Frenchmen Mario (Yves Montand) and Jo (Charles Vanel) bond; when during the course of the trip Mario gradually realizes that Jo has 'lost his nerve' (has become a coward), Mario feels personally affronted-- he thinks he's been betrayed, putting his trust in a man who proves practically useless in the mission.
But dealing with the final hazard-- a pool of oil that grows deeper and wider with every pump of the twisted leaky pipeline-- Mario finds himself betraying Jo in turn, in a no-win situation far more horrifying and darkly sticky than anything they've faced so far (Friedkin has to settle for a random group of bandits). We get thrills but we also get the intensity of watching Mario forced to eat his words about honor and loyalty in friendship-- the self-justifying bickering Mario has with Jo afterwards is the kind of odd realistic detail that helps locate horror in everyday life, the way a married couple might quarrel after a harrowing home invasion.
Not saying Sorcerer is a bad film-- it's a masterpiece of production design and cinematography, the prime example of a skilled filmmaker (Friedkin) falling prey to his own hubris and nearly succeeding. But Wages of Fear is Clouzot at the peak of his powers; he knew exactly what was needed, he knew exactly how it all fitted together and played out, he knew it was the emotional stakes and not the mechanics of the thrills involved that hook an audience. In the end I have my preference.
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