Who’s up for a nice, relaxing weekend drive? Not Henri-Georges Clouzot. When he adapted Le Salaire de la peur (the first of three autobiographical novels by Georges Arnaud) he took cinema audiences on a nerve-wracking journey into the heart of postwar nihilism. Four men – a German, an Italian, and two Frenchmen – take their lives in their hands as they clutch the steering wheel of a truck filled with nitroglycerine. Within its high-stakes noir drama of desperation and danger lies a subtle and more meaningful than ever metaphor for the tortured relationship between Europe and America, as the four men risk life and limb for the Yankee dollar. – Richard Whittaker
Jan. 18-19
