DVD Watch
The Wages of Fear
Criterion, $39.95
Le Samouraï
Criterion, $29.95
You can’t swing a dead chat anywhere near French cinema without knocking over the Nouvelle Vague. Like any true artistic upheaval, it was a reaction to everything before it, and it affected everything afterward. On a second disc of bonus features to Henri-Georges Clouzot’s unforgettable The Wages of Fear (1953) – the upgrade to Criterion’s previous DVD – the New Wave is blamed for all but guillotining “classic” French film forefathers like Jean Renoir, Julien Duvivier, and Marcel Carné. In Clouzot’s tale of four men trucking nitroglycerin 300 miles through treacherous Brazilian terrain (remade by William Friedkin as 1977’s Sorcerer), the rig cabs alone evoke American classics like They Drive by Night and Criterion’s recent Jules Dassin overlook Thieves’ Highway. Through peerless classics of his own, Le Corbeau (1943) and Diabolique (1954), Clouzot now resides (in)famously in Hitchcockian terrain, and while both masters of suspense dwelled on the deterioration of the human condition, the Frenchman was far more devious in his leprosy. “His films show him as a pessimist,” agrees Suzy Delair, cherubic moonbeam of Clouzot’s dark horse best, ’47’s Quai des Orfevres, “but at heart, in real life, he was an optimist.” Wages‘ Mario and Jo (Yves Montand and Charles Vanel) might be doomed, but their spirits still roar in the maw of oblivion. As for the charge that Clouzot had no sense of humor, watch for the director’s pipe painted on the skull-and-crossbones danger signs.Jean-Pierre Melville’s oeuvre isn’t exactly chock-full of pratfalls, but the twittering finch in his cold-hearted kill Le Samouraï remains a remarkably tender touch. Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, and John Ford, not to mention noirs like This Gun for Hire and Sam Fuller’s Pickup on South Street, inhabit the bloodless shadows of Melville’s assassin story, a B&W film in all but color, which, though made in 1967, feels more like ’57 or ’47. Like Clouzot, the cowboy-hatted auteur only used dialogue when absolutely necessary. Alain Delon, the French male equivalent of Catherine Deneuve, was never offered a better role, his watery blue eyes always on the horizon of any samurai’s death march. Brief but choice extras include Rui Nogueira misinterpreting the film’s finale – it’s inevitable that gangsters change their spots during that one final job that goes awry – while Ginette Vincendeau and Melville himself proffer insights into the man behind classics Bob le Flambeur and Rififi riff Le Cercle Rouge. That the finch was the only casualty when Melville’s studio burned down during filming for Le Samouraï hurts.
Also Out Now
Au Hasard Balthazar (Criterion, $29.95): In this year of parrots, penguins, and grizzlies – not to mention Jacques Demy’s Donkey Skin on DVD – Robert Bresson’s reel-life donkey Balthazar is nothing less than a cinematic miracle.Le Notti Blanche (Criterion, $29.95): Visconti’s unabashedly romantic set-piece, sourced from Dostoyevsky, proves you can neutralize Marcello Mastroianni’s beauty with Maria Schell’s Austrian Blanche, but not his dancing. Their screen tests are precious.
This article appears in November 4 • 2005.
