Sorcerer (1977, William Friedkin) (Patreon)

66/100

[Just realized I never announced this as last week's poll winner. Well, now you know!]

Second viewing (last seen at BAM Cinématek in 2007), no change in rating...though I find myself wondering, as I did last time, what my reaction might be if I watched it after an Eternal Sunshine-style device entirely deleted The Wages of Fear from my memory. Friedkin apparently always maintained that he had made another adaptation of Arnaud's novel, not a remake of Clouzot's film; questions of comparative fidelity aside (since they're unanswerable by me), that's very easy to believe, as the two are strikingly different despite featuring the same basic characters and narrative. I'll get to the reasons why I consider Wages near-great (rating: 81) and Sorcerer merely quite good below, but let me first concede that Friedkin handily wins their competition for Most Unforgettable Suspense Sequence: Even if you know that everything's being controlled by hydraulics (and I didn't look that up until afterward), the bridge crossing just looks deranged, in the Herzogian sense. I'd go so far as to name it the all-time champion in a subdivision called "rickety danger," which includes all instances of objects that might disastrously collapse at any moment. That Friedkin insisted, at considerable expense, upon setting the sequence in a torrential rainstorm is crucial—Sorcerer places much stronger emphasis (Wages really places none at all) on the hostility of terrain, rather than merely of roads, and the raging storm amplifies the sense of nature itself objecting to the trucks' presence and to humanity's attemped circumventions of obstacles. This film is elemental in a way and to a degree that Clouzot didn't even attempt, and the bridge sequence in particular fully justifies its existence. You simply can't call it redundant. 

Here's the thing, though. That sequence, in common with nearly everything else in the film, would be no less effective were the trucks transporting, I dunno, medical supplies. Or 400 cases of Coors beer. ("I just passed another Kojak with a Kodak, this place is crawling with bears.") Friedkin made the right choice in changing the title, because Sorcerer isn't even remotely about the wages of fear; for long stretches, it's easy to forget altogether about the nitroglycerin, and you really have to suspend disbelief that the truck lurching around on the bridge wouldn't have triggered an explosion much earlier. Friedkin opted either not to film (if they were in the book) or not to duplicate (if Clouzot invented them) Wages' most memorable setpieces, which are constructed around having to maintain a constant speed and avoid sudden braking at all costs, because otherwise BOOM! And the drivers here aren't constantly petrified by the awareness of their cargo. Wages opens with a lengthy prologue that serves mostly to establish Charles Vanel's character, Jo, as a fearless badass, thereby making it more meaningful when the omnipresent risk of being blown up turns him into a gibbering wreck; Sorcerer's equivalent, played by Francisco Rabal, demonstrates no special courage early on (just shoots some unarmed dude) and no frantic terror later. This is also a very American movie in that it would much rather spend time needlessly explaining why each of our antiheroes wound up stranded in Nowhere, Colombia than show them desperately idling there for the better part of an hour. (That's Ed, I much prefer Sorcerer's fatalistic ending to Wages' rather cutely ironic one, even though the latter proceeds directly from my preferred theme. And you need at least Jackie's opening vignette to make that ending work.) Most of my peers seem to have no trouble perceiving both films as just about equally superb in their individual ways, but I'm afraid that I just can't watch Sorceror without thinking "But where's the anxiety?" Tangerine Dream's foreboding score, while terrific, can't generate that all on its own.