If your list of the greatest suspense films doesn’t include this grimy French nerve-shredder, your list is all wrong, Bucko. Director Henri-Georges Clouzot has only a few things to work with here: two trucks primitively loaded with nitroglycerin, some rough Third World country trails on which to transport it and four men who all come apart in their own ways over the job.
It’s the starkest kind of suspense, where survival is all that matters and the characters’ worst enemy is some combination of physical laws and themselves. Clouzot sees every rock, puddle and bump in the road. Any one of them could blow Yves Montand’s head off. Clouzot also hears the rumble of the tires, the crunch of the dirt beneath and the patter of falling rocks. When fiery death could happen at any moment, every cut counts and Clouzot’s moves are careful and smart. It’s an airtight directing job, worthy of study. For the first hour of the film, Clouzot trains that same keen eye on a mock Neorealistic exploration of a poor Mexican village (actually shot in the south of France), where the roads are dirt, the jobs are scarce, the climate is hot and the clothes are rags. It’s the kind of place that could make a homesick, stranded and broke expatriate do anything to leave.