The Criterion Collection is written as “gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions of the highest technical quality…”  Wages of Fear is one of the first movies to join the Criterion Collection and comes to us from acclaimed suspense director Henri Georges Clouzot.  The film arrived in movie theaters in 1953 in France and didn’t hit the U.S. until two years later.  How does this alleged classic fair on Blu-ray?  Let’s find out…

Film 

Storytelling is a timeless art and that certainly applies to films.  Yes, we have greater technologies and capabilities in movie-making than we did ten years ago, let alone fifty years ago.  Nevertheless, there are still countless classics from the past.  Wages of Fear has been built up to be one such movie, but does it really measure up?  A little earlier, I mentioned that director, Henri Georges Clouzot, was known for suspense in his films.  Yes, he does deliver suspense in Wages of Fear.  He also manages to drag out the movie in such an incredibly annoying fashion that not only did I find myself constantly checking to see how much time was left in the film, but I also debated whether or not to hit the fast-forward button.  Shame on me for thinking that, but it is what it is.  

This movie is two and a half hours in length and now that I have watched it, I can say with confidence that forty minutes could have easily been axed from this film.  The acting is good, but there are far too many occurrences taking place that have absolutely nothing to do with driving the story.  These items excel as nothing more than distractions.  There certainly are little nuances to keep an eye on that do have a discreet message behind them.  That aside, I look back on a lot of the sequences during the film and ask, “What’s the point??” 

The film has a severe tendency to drag on and while Clouzot may have had the intent to create suspense by doing this, it backfired…tremendously.  I do congratulate him on the irony presented at the film’s closure, but other than that, watching Wages of Fear is like trying to walk through knee-deep mud.  You get nowhere fast. 

Video 

I could be wrong, but I do believe that this is the first black and white film to be released on Blu-ray.  I have one question.  Why?  Is it to have the sharpest grays, blacks, and whites possible?  I do understand that this film was cleaned up from its previous appearance, but as a guest speaker said at a Blu-ray discussion at the San Diego Comic Con last year, “What’s the point of putting black and white films on Blu-ray?”  Perhaps one would need to compare this 1080p version of Wages of Fear against its “not cleaned up” counterpart.  It is presented in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio with a very uncommon Linear PCM encode.  There is grain present throughout the film, but believe it or not, in no way is it distracting.  Some color films from today’s era should take note of this.  This is probably the most difficult rating I have had to apply to a movie because you have to consider the source of the actual film reel.  We’re talking 1953 black and white.  You can’t really fault this. 

Audio 

Monaural.  That means no rear speakers, no subwoofer, no complete utilization of your wonderful surround sound, period.  What else is there to be said here?  There is absolutely no pizzazz in the audio category.  There is no Dolby 5.1 or anything of the like to be found.  Ah, it seems like only a paragraph ago when I said the video for Wages of Fear was the most difficult rating I ever had to apply.  Scratch that and replace the word “video” with “audio.”  I know, I know…if the video rating isn’t going to suffer based on the original source, how can the audio?  Good point.  However, the video is clean as far as black and white goes.  The audio has gone through restoration but it’s still dead to the senses.  Hooray for the eliminating the pops and hisses, but this category is for surround sound audio. 

Special Features 

The extras on the Wages of Fear disc, labeled as “Supplements” on the menu, are few but bear some meat as far as their running time.  Only the first extra regarding the assistant director appears in High Definition as 1080i, as the rest are in a standard def presentation.

• Michel Romanoff – a piece about the film’s assistant director (22:26).
• Marc Godin - a segment about the co-author of the book, Clouzot: Cineaste (10:09).
• Yves Montand - This is an interview from 1988 with the lead actor of Wages of Fear (5:00).
• Henri Georges Clouzot: The Enlightened Tyrant - A French documentary with English subtitles about the acclaimed French director (52:34).
• Censored - An interesting look at the scenes cut from Wages of Fear for its 1955 U.S. release.  It also goes in-depth to discuss the media’s view on the film at that time (12:12).

Final Thoughts 

As a French-based film set in South America, it includes dialogue in Spanish, Italian, English and of course French.  It is certainly a multi-cultural film, but does not really put its shoes on until the latter portion of its run-time.  I expected more out of this but the story was such a mish-mosh early on that it left a bad taste in my mouth and continued to struggle in reaching some relevant substance.  There was nothing to be gained by drawing out so much of the character development or the illusion thereof.