So many good words have been written about this brilliant film that it seems unlikely that any more are necessary. However, there are a couple of points which occurred to me as I watched it again yesterday.
Firstly, the language. This is a truly multi-lingual film, and one of its chief joys for me is the wild multiplicity of thoroughly mangled foreign accents and the earthy, slang-filled dialogue. It's great to hear Italians and Germans and Americans talking in French, Frenchmen and Russians in English, Englishmen in Spanish. Eet iz as if I wurz to write ze 'ole of zis revieew lyik zis. And when the two French guys (Mario and Jo) are together, their speech is peppered with really down-to-earth slang and obscenities.
The subtitles of my copy (although good) didn't always manage to convey the exact sense of the rough talk. One instance was blatantly censored; as Jo and Mario are leaving the depot with the laden trucks, O'Brien shouts a very male "Merde!" at them for luck: the subtitles' "Break a leg!" misses the muck a little. O'Brien tries again, with a more human "Good luck, boys", but Jo's response, hidden in the roar of the accelerating truck is, "Et un Coca-Cola dans le c*n!" For non-French speakers, men don't have one.
The second point, neatly enough, follows on from that. Although movies can be "about" almost anything you want, Wages Of Fear presents us with an intense, highly-charged subtext of what it means to be a man and how men relate to each other. There is a whole load of unacknowledged sexuality just below the surface of this film - hey, Mario even gets to kiss Luigi - and I feel that any accusations of misogyny levelled at this movie need to be interpreted in a slightly wider context.
I first saw Wages of Fear at an after-school film club over thirty years ago, where we were lucky enough to be introduced to a number of movie masterpieces by a teacher who simply adored good film-making. He would talk coherently and intelligently beforehand about each film for a good ten minutes (without notes) and this was one of his all-time favourites. He was right, of course. Thanks, Tony. 10/10
Firstly, the language. This is a truly multi-lingual film, and one of its chief joys for me is the wild multiplicity of thoroughly mangled foreign accents and the earthy, slang-filled dialogue. It's great to hear Italians and Germans and Americans talking in French, Frenchmen and Russians in English, Englishmen in Spanish. Eet iz as if I wurz to write ze 'ole of zis revieew lyik zis. And when the two French guys (Mario and Jo) are together, their speech is peppered with really down-to-earth slang and obscenities.
The subtitles of my copy (although good) didn't always manage to convey the exact sense of the rough talk. One instance was blatantly censored; as Jo and Mario are leaving the depot with the laden trucks, O'Brien shouts a very male "Merde!" at them for luck: the subtitles' "Break a leg!" misses the muck a little. O'Brien tries again, with a more human "Good luck, boys", but Jo's response, hidden in the roar of the accelerating truck is, "Et un Coca-Cola dans le c*n!" For non-French speakers, men don't have one.
The second point, neatly enough, follows on from that. Although movies can be "about" almost anything you want, Wages Of Fear presents us with an intense, highly-charged subtext of what it means to be a man and how men relate to each other. There is a whole load of unacknowledged sexuality just below the surface of this film - hey, Mario even gets to kiss Luigi - and I feel that any accusations of misogyny levelled at this movie need to be interpreted in a slightly wider context.
I first saw Wages of Fear at an after-school film club over thirty years ago, where we were lucky enough to be introduced to a number of movie masterpieces by a teacher who simply adored good film-making. He would talk coherently and intelligently beforehand about each film for a good ten minutes (without notes) and this was one of his all-time favourites. He was right, of course. Thanks, Tony. 10/10