HBO Max Officially Drops the 73-Year-Old Thriller That Inspired One of Quentin Tarantino’s Favorite Movies
HBO Max has begun streaming Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1953 thriller "The Wages of Fear" in the United States, giving audiences the chance to revisit the classic that inspired William Friedkin's 1977 film "Sorcerer". While Friedkin remains best known for "The Exorcist" and "The French Connection", he considered "Sorcerer" his favourite of his own films, and Quentin Tarantino has ranked it alongside "Apocalypse Now". Friedkin insisted his film was not a remake of the earlier French classic but a separate adaptation of the same 1950 source novel, making the arrival of the original on a major streaming platform a notable moment for film fans wanting to compare the two.
Clouzot's original follows four men hired by an American company to drive trucks loaded with dangerous chemicals across dangerous terrain, and it won both the Palme d'Or at Cannes and the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. Unlike "Sorcerer", which received mixed reviews on its initial release before later being reassessed as an underappreciated classic, Clouzot's film was an instant success with both critics and audiences on release. The article's headline refers to the film "leaving" HBO Max, though the text itself describes it as newly available to stream there.
- "The Wages of Fear" (1953) is now streaming on HBO Max in the US.
- The film inspired Friedkin's "Sorcerer", a favourite of Friedkin and Tarantino.
- Clouzot's original won Cannes' Palme d'Or and Berlin's Golden Bear.
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HBO Max's US library has just added "The Wages of Fear", a 1953 French thriller directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot about four men hired to drive trucks packed with unstable explosives across treacherous roads. The film is widely regarded as a classic of tense, suspense-driven cinema and won two of the industry's top honours on release, the Palme d'Or at Cannes and the Golden Bear at Berlin.
Its main relevance today lies in its connection to "Sorcerer", a 1977 film by William Friedkin, the director best known for "The Exorcist" and "The French Connection". Friedkin, who regarded "Sorcerer" as his own favourite among his films, based it on the same 1950 novel as Clouzot's picture, though he maintained his version was a fresh adaptation rather than a remake. Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has separately named "Sorcerer" among his favourite films.
The two films had contrasting fortunes when they first appeared. Clouzot's original was an immediate hit with critics and audiences, while Friedkin's take drew a mixed response before later being reappraised as an underrated work. Its availability on a major streaming service gives audiences an easy way to watch the original and consider it alongside the film it influenced.