The Wages of Fear
| The Wages of Fear | |
|---|---|
Promotional poster | |
| Directed by | Henri-Georges Clouzot |
| Screenplay by | Henri-Georges Clouzot Jérome Geronimi |
| Based on | Le Salaire de la peur (1950 novel) by Georges Arnaud |
| Produced by | Raymond Borderie |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Armand Thirard |
| Edited by | Madeleine Gug Etiennette Muse Henri Rust |
| Music by | Georges Auric |
Production company |
|
| Distributed by | Cinédis (France) |
Release date |
|
Running time | 153 minutes |
| Countries | France Italy |
| Languages |
|
| Box office | 6,944,306 admissions |
The Wages of Fear (French: Le Salaire de la peur) is a 1953 thriller film directed and co-written by Henri-Georges Clouzot, and starring Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter van Eyck and Véra Clouzot. The film centres on a group of four down-on-their-luck European men who are hired by an American oil company to drive two trucks, loaded with nitroglycerin needed to extinguish an oil well fire, over mountain dirt roads. It is adapted from a 1950 French novel of the same name by Georges Arnaud.
The film brought Clouzot international fame—winning both the Golden Bear and the Palme d'Or at the 1953 Berlin Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival, respectively—and enabled him to direct Les Diaboliques (1955). In France, it was the fourth highest-grossing film of the year with a total of nearly 7 million admissions.