Detroit Film Theatre: The Wages of Fear

We’re celebrating this weekend’s Concours with what is likely the greatest film about driving ever made. And it’s not about speed—in fact, just the opposite. Four desperate men, stuck in a desolate town in Central America, agree to earn $2,000 each to carefully drive two trucks filled with nitroglycerine over 300 miles of rocky, decrepit mountain roads to help extinguish a raging oil-well fire. Henri-Georges Clouzot's masterpiece is one of the great, existential movie thrillers—both darkly funny and utterly nerve-wracking. Clouzot (Diabolique) has staged sequences that are as agonizingly suspenseful as anything in movie history. That's no accident, since endurance, fate and the human condition are what The Wages of Fear is about. The restored original cut of this visionary work is thrilling in ways we always hope suspense films will be; we are reminded, almost perversely, to be careful what we wish for. Grand Prize, Cannes Film Festival. In French with English subtitles. Tickets are $9.50 / $7.50 for seniors, students, and members. Online purchases include a $1.50 convenience fee per transaction.