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Henri-Georges Clouzot takes on Hawks and Huston, his first scene puts man on the ground with cockroach and vulture for the benefit of Peckinpah. The squalid village is the parched void in which people exercise their petty cruelty on dogs and each other, "there's so little to entertain us." Third World misery is catnip to American imperialism ("If there's oil around, they're not far behind"), Rita Hayworth appears as part of a mural in a seedy cantina, the film's equivalent of the Hollywood poster in Bicycle Thieves. When a refinery explodes, desperate men are sought to drive nitroglycerin to the burning well: A suicidal mission yet a chance to escape for the pub king (Yves Montand), the Parisian gangster (Charles Vanel), the Italian worker (Folco Lulli) and the Teutonic fugitive (Peter Van Eyck). As trucks travel crater-cracked paths, steer atop collapsing platforms, and detonate rocky obstacles, Vanel's bulldog façade cracks into terror while Montand's Bogartian pose reveals sadistic streaks. "Can't you see he's just a walking corpse?" "You think we're not?" When contrabandists become businessmen and life is blown away as easily as tobacco on a half-rolled cigarillo, heroism and grace are notions that wither in the heat—the saloon wench (Véra Clouzot) prays underneath a tree for divine mercy and finds instead a dangling corpse. Pépé le Moko appropriately degraded, a morass of oil to swamp vehicles and mangle limbs and brilliantly visualize the world's oozing existential slime. A link to Renoir nevertheless materializes, grudgingly and unmistakably, as Grand Illusion tramps wearily commiserate in the darkened road (one expires with "rien" on his lips, the other staggers toward the inferno). "That's division of labor for you!" The ultimate punchline warns about dancing on the edge of Clouzot's precipice. Cinematography by Armand Thirard. With William Tubbs, Dario Moreno, Jo Dest, and Antonio Centa. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |