The Frame

I’m sorry, but this is supposed to be Henri-Georges Clouzot’s best film and one of the best thrillers of all time? I think it took me three days to watch it. I don’t usually consider “thriller” and “fell asleep” as compatible terms. Four French guys stuck in South America without any money to get home take the very dangerous job of transporting live nitroglycerine to a burning oil well site. I’m not sure why I didn’t connect to the film more, honestly–there are some intense sequences, but they’re quietly intense; this all probably says more about my skewed expectations of thrillers based on more recent movies than anything else, and I hate that. Anyway. There were scenes I liked (the main driver trying to keep his injured partner awake and thus alive stands out), but mostly I couldn’t keep track of why each obstacle was such a problem for them to overcome. And the ending was completely lame. Personally, I liked Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques a lot better. Again, I think there’s a large chunk of personal preference for Les Diaboliques’s double-crossing murder plot over The Wages of Fear’s South American survival story. However, because this film is so well regarded, I’ll probably rewatch it in a few years to see if I can find out what I missed.
Above Average