Sorcerer (William Friedkin, 1977) vs Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953)

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 aspired, Friedkin delivered. 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 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 as 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' reaction 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 the 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 you care more when Clouzot's drivers are put in peril, suffer, snarl and snap at each other. 

I'd call Amidou's Kassem the remake's noted exception: Amidou is excellent 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 freakout scene (takes a machete and singlehandedly tries to clear an alternate route through the jungle) designed to win him an acting nomination (doesn't happen). 

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, more precision in the way Clouzot establishes each obstacle and how they're overcome (alternate title: 8 Million Ways to Die). Approaching the twenty miles of corrugated road, the driver of each team explains to his partner the problem: takes too long and puts too much wear on the gears to slowly cross on second gear so the only solution is to floor it-- to fly over the corrugation at an insanely counterintuitive forty miles an hour, and right then and there the audience feels its collective sphincter contract as Clouzot cuts to a foot stomping on a gas pedal, the engine roaring-- you expect the next image to be two hundred liters of nitroglycerine blooming into a great ball of flame. 

That's the first 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 when chance changes circumstances, and the only way the first truck can warn the second is to spread a single white handkerchief on the road?

By way of contrast there's not much thrill to Friedkin's remake; after spending almost an hour introducing each character we don't get any real threats until the rope bridge stretched across the river, where the director 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.  

Pause a moment and take 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 on the best trucks and mechanics money can buy for the four drivers (they have to waste time customizing their own vehicles). We're also asked to watch the trucks grin their great goofy gap-toothed grins without once chuckling, or believe that multi-ton vehicles can cross a rope bridge without a steel cable in sight (not to mention the fraying suspension ropes are too far apart, the bridge's planking resembling the kind of simulated hazard found in amusement park rides, 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 stormy bridge-crossing but the final odyssey through surreal desert landscapes (in a South American jungle?), with Friedkin abandoning Mexico to shoot in New Mexico, in Navajo territory. Scanlon must walk the flat mesa alone, silent stone figures towering above him, Tangerine Dream's synthesizer score filling his head-- the ultimate Sartrean trek, who wouldn't crack under that kind of punishment?

The sequence is impressive (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 trek Mario 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 useless in the face of danger. 

But dealing with the final hurdle-- 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 darker and stickier and more horrifying than anything they could have imagined (Friedkin has to settle for a random group of armed 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 Mario does to Jo afterwards is the kind of grotesquely hilariously honest detail that helps connect the horror to everyday life, like a married couple bickering after a brutal 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 coming tantalizingly close to succeeding. But Wages of Fear is Clouzot at the peak of his powers; he knew exactly what was needed, he knew how it all fitted together and played out, he never forgot a basic truth: that emotional stakes and not the mechanics of the thrill sequences are what keeps the audience hooked. In the end I have my preference.