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New Restoration

The purest exercise in cinematic tension ever carved into celluloid … A work of art so viscerally nerve-racking that one fears a misplaced whisper from the audience could cause the screen to explode.”

Dennis Lehane, novelist

Henri-Georges Clouzot (Les diaboliques) had his greatest success with this legendary thriller, which won best film honours at both Berlin and Cannes. The moody first part sets the scene: a squalid, sweltering Latin American town of expats, attracted by the American-controlled petroleum industry and now seeking a way—any way—out. The nail-biting second part is a masterful piece of dispassionate suspense, as four outcasts—a Corsican (Yves Montand), a Frenchman (Charles Vanel), an Italian (Folco Lulli), and a German (Peter van Eyck)—agree to drive two truckloads of nitroglycerine over treacherous jungle roads to an oil well fire raging 350 miles away. The tension is unrelenting, and justifiably famous, while the film’s pessimistic vision of human endeavour is amongst the darkest in French cinema—early releases were heavily censored. This restoration from the nitrate negative adds five minutes of footage missing from the film’s last re-release in the 2000s.

In French, English, Spanish, and German with English subtitles

Clouzot’s finest moment … It’s not so much dying that is at stake, but rather the futility of prodigious effort, the strain of inhuman concentration.”

Andrew Sarris, The Village Voice
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Note

Sorcerer, William Friedkin’s 1977 remake of Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear, also screens in this program cycle.