criterionforum.org

Nov 23

THE WAGES OF FEAR (Limited Edition Dual Format Edition)
A film by Henri-Georges Clouzot

Critically hailed upon its original release, The Wages of Fear has maintained its reputation as a classic of world cinema and was responsible for propelling its director Henri-Georges Clouzot to international fame.

Based on the 1950 French novel La Salaire de la Peur the film tells the story of an oil well in a South American village which is owned by an American Company. The well catches fire and the company quickly hires four desperate European men, to drive two trucks loaded with highly volatile nitro-glycerine needed to extinguish the flames

Clouzot's deft ability to flit between tense dialogue and flashbacks allows the audience to become intimately acquainted with the four drivers before switching in the second half to a nail-biting, goosebump inducing thriller. The film brought Clouzot international fame and he went to direct les Diaboliques, the film which cemented his reputation as a French Hitchcock.

Special features

•TBC

So somebody on another forum just pointed out this has been delayed until October 24th 2016...is this another Eyes Without A Face incident? I have no idea what would cause something to be delayed by an entire year!

A little bit gutted that this is yet another BFI title that has fallen by the wayside. At least we know Rocco & His Brothers is getting the MoC treatment, but what's going on with this one? I've tweeted BFI, so will wait for a response.

rapta wrote:So somebody on another forum just pointed out this has been delayed until October 24th 2016...is this another Eyes Without A Face incident? I have no idea what would cause something to be delayed by an entire year!

A little bit gutted that this is yet another BFI title that has fallen by the wayside. At least we know Rocco & His Brothers is getting the MoC treatment, but what's going on with this one? I've tweeted BFI, so will wait for a response.

This is or used to be a Studio Canal title, so maybe that's the reason.

Was Amazon responsible for the date change? They're constantly making up new release dates that have no bearing on reality.

MichaelB wrote:Was Amazon responsible for the date change? They're constantly making up new release dates that have no bearing on reality.

Well I've since asked Amazon about it and they said it was changed by the supplier. So it's either an error, or it has been indefinitely held back.

Must admit I was expecting another delay, since there hadn't been any specs or even the artwork confirmed, but I didn't think it would be a whole year 'til we'd see it. Will have to wait and see what BFI have to say about it...no response as of yet though.

UPDATE: okay so since typing this comment I remembered I had contacted one of the BFI team in the past so decided to give them a quick email about this. They responded as such:

I’m sorry to say the big delay in releasing this title is not an error. There are various reasons for it moving so far back but they aren’t really ones I can go into at the current time. All I can say is that we are definitely going to release it and we hope that this delay will mean that we can make it the quality of release that the film deserves.

So yeah, good news is that they're still releasing it, and likely to the same standard as their recent releases, but bad news is that Amazon didn't make up that delay. I'm sure it'll be worth the wait and there will be other brilliant BFI releases in between then and now.

Coming in January with an Adrian Martin commentary to boot!

domino harvey wrote:Coming in January with an Adrian Martin commentary to boot!

Woah, really? Great news if true!

domino harvey wrote:Coming in January with an Adrian Martin commentary to boot!

Where did u get that info?

Adrian Martin directly told one of our members

neat, thanks!

I wonder if this means the new restoration is ready (or will be by the end of the year), or the BFI decided to just settle for the current master (which is already pretty good)? I did ask a member of the BFI team about The Wages of Fear (i.e. Adrian Martin, January release) the other day on Facebook, but they neglected to respond.

For future reference, if I share an Adrian Martin news item, it's come directly from him to one of our members with his blessing to share. But if the title hasn't been officially announced, please don't go tattling to the label about it!

TF1 Video has a huge Clouzot project, which is their other big project with the Almodovar one. Their restoration for Wages of Fear received a funding from the CNC this summer. It can be granted after the work has been completed, but not very long ago.
I would thus guess that this is what the BFI was waiting for, and that it will be very soon finished and available.

domino harvey wrote:For future reference, if I share an Adrian Martin news item, it's come directly from him to one of our members with his blessing to share. But if the title hasn't been officially announced, please don't go tattling to the label about it!

Apologies, I thought it would be okay in this specific case since the title was announced over a year ago (and was subsequently delayed indefinitely). I actually contacted the same BFI source before about The Wages of Fear (back in August), and they were happy to tell me where they were with it, but I admit that this time I probably shouldn't have been so specific and just asked them the same thing again (i.e. "is there an update with The Wages of Fear?"). Sorry about that, will be more subtle next time (if there is a next time). I'm sure we'll hear something more concrete within the next month or so when the Q1 2017 slate is announced.

It has a nice cover now:

Shoved to mid-June. Presumably waiting for the new resto. (Along with the other Clouzots hopefully?)

They're definitely using the 4K restoration (has been confirmed by a BFI source). Was going to be delayed to mid-2017, and the January date was probably just to indicate they're still releasing it (so presumably less people are put off pre-ordering it).

No idea if they're planning on releasing the other Clouzot titles but I'm sure somebody will (perhaps Eureka or Arrow).

For those of you who like to be scared, Ecran Total published an interview (in French) with Guillaume Schiffman. He is a French DoP (and worked notably with Michel Hazanavicius) and has supervised the Wages of Fear 4K restoration.

In introduction, remember he worked on the Marseille Trilogy restorations (and also the French MK2 restoration of The Last Metro).

Selected abstracts :
"I worked on The Last Metro restoration, my mom wrote the scenario. I always admired Almendros' worked, he was kind of my mentor in the profession. I tried to pay his work a hommage by improving it without betraying it."
"When I work on a frame, I put myself in the DoP place and tell myself that if he could have improved this or that aspect of the picture, he'd done it."
"We started with a 4K scan of the OCN, but many sequences looked like they were from an IP scan, with a lower quality. To avoid making the change of quality obvious, we had to "degrade" progessively the picture before the cut, and then "improve" it after."
"I had to correct some day-for-night shots or to improve some backgrounds behind the trucks windows which were performed in studio and which would look quite dated today."
"For the sequence where Charles Vanel falls in the fuel, we had to unify the blacks and to add brillance on the fuel to reinforce the effect."

Guess I won't be placing that order until we get a good look at the results.

tenia wrote:In introduction, remember he worked on the Marseille Trilogy restorations (and also the French MK2 restoration of The Last Metro).

Wait, do you mean the Pagnol restorations were compromised in some way? I thought they looked fine in the DVDbeaver review.

Jean-Luc Garbo wrote:

tenia wrote:In introduction, remember he worked on the Marseille Trilogy restorations (and also the French MK2 restoration of The Last Metro).

Wait, do you mean the Pagnol restorations were compromised in some way? I thought they looked fine in the DVDbeaver review.

On the contrary, I meant to remind people that these restorations pleased people, so the revisionism expressed by Schiffman might be much less visible than what it seems.

I watched Marius last night and it looks pretty great so I wouldn't get too up in arms about anything just yet.

Ah, now I see - thanks. I was getting worried because that Pagnol trilogy is my most anticipated title this year.

Amazon just sent me an email saying this has been pushed to October

I would have bet the farm on that happening.