3 minute read
Film Review: Sorceror
A dangerous mission ends up being a look into the abyss for four unlucky souls in William Friedkin’s superb, nail biting and criminally underrated Sorceror (1977).
The great American filmmaker William Friedkin recently passed away at the age of 87. A notable figure of the 1970s New Hollywood cinema, his double whammy of directing The French Connection followed by The Exorcist saw him as a hot commodity in Hollywood. The next project was his to choose. It would prove to be the most ambitious work of his career, but also the most misunderstood.
Sorcerer is based on the Georges Arnaud 1950 French novel Le Salaire de la peur. The plot depicts four outcasts from varied backgrounds meeting in a South American village, where they are assigned to transport cargoes of aged, poorly kept dynamite that is so unstable that it is ‘sweating’ its dangerous basic ingredient; nitroglycerin.
Sorcerer was the second adaptation of Arnaud’s novel, the first being Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear in 1953. Friedkin wanted to go back to the source material and make it more gritty. It’s four leads, Roy Scheider, Bruce Cremer, Francisco Rabal and Amidou are terrific.
We are asked to sympathise with four men of dubious character. And we do. Friedkin has stated that a star may have improved the movies box office. In fact, he wanted Steve McQueen for the Scheider role. However, the fact that the cast are not familiar to us adds a tension in who is going to make it and who is not.
Boy, that tension. You won’t have a nail left to bite after the movie. As that deadly dynamite is sweating, the audience is as well. It is so expertly executed. The bridge sequences are some of the greatest action set pieces ever committed to the big screen. No CGI, all done in camera. You feel the sweat, the heat, the terrifying howl of that wind and rain. It’s a horror movie really. Never before have I felt the sheer existential heft of a dangerous task depicted on-screen. The score by legendary electronic German group, Tangerine Dream is so good as well. It’s both tense and ethereal. Friedkin brought them onto the project as they seemed to him “on the cutting edge of the electronic synthesizer sound” that soon would become a staple in mainstream culture.
In the director’s opinion, the premise of The Wages of Fear (both the novel and the first film adaptation) seemed to him a metaphor for “the world [being] full of strangers who hated one another, but if they didn’t cooperate, if they didn’t work together in some way, they would blow up.” Walon Green, the screenwriter, said that he and Friedkin “wanted a cynical movie where fate turns the corner for the people before they turn it themselves”.
A critical and commercial failure at the time, its reputation as a masterpiece has only emerged over the years. It’s an ambitious work from an ambitious director. It suggests we all cross bridges throughout our lives, some more dangerous then others and all heading for that final one. Deciding to make that journey can be the hardest thing. Climb onto that truck and turn the key.
