The Wages of Fear

Thursday night, French TV showed a famous French adventure film/thriller from the 1950s. Le Salaire de la peur is as exciting as ever, but watching it again, I was surprised at how much the message (underlying and not so underlying) is aimed at denouncing Americans, their economy, and their way of life. In one word: capitalism destroys, corrupts, maims, and kills. Compare with the fun-loving, wise-cracking, intermingling, and race-mixing European and South American bon vivants (i.e., the victims of the above).

Here's the kicker. The movie, released in 1953, was filmed in 1951 and 1952, only half a decade aftter the World War II intervention of the Americans that everybody realizes that the French are eternally grateful for. Moreover: while French cinema was castigating the American-style capitalists for being addicted to oil and causing mayhem, death, and destruction, who was heading the Soviet Union?

Maybe it wasn't so surprizing that the film was showed on Arte, co-sponsored by Libération…