The Pnictogen Wing

they're in Henri-Georges Clouzot's harrowing (and first-rate) social-realist film The Wages of Fear, as two of the desperate men who take on the job of trucking nitroglycerin to the site of an oil-drilling blowout. that's Folco Lulli on the left, as Luigi; taller Yves Montand, on the right, as Mario. (Peter van Eyck, playing a character nicknamed 'Bimba', is off to the left in the background.)

Mario and Luigi aren't exactly uncommon names so I'm sure it's purely an accident that a brutal French film about the evils of capitalist "resource extraction" happens to line up with a couple of video-game characters. but it's still amusing.

~Chara

from "Disco Elysium" to Henri-Georges Clouzot's scarifying The Wages of Fear, a masterpiece of social realism about the disposability of human life in a society devoted to capitalism and "resource extraction". it's also agonizing to watch.

you know that the Americans despised this film? they considered it commie propaganda and a slander on hard-working oil executives. what a feckin' joke.

~Chara

great scene where Bimba is pouring nitro and everyone else is stimming nervously: Jo drumming on the truck door, Luigi chewing up a cigar, Mario flicking a box of matches ~Chara

from "Disco Elysium" to Henri-Georges Clouzot's scarifying The Wages of Fear, a masterpiece of social realism about the disposability of human life in a society devoted to capitalism and "resource extraction". it's also agonizing to watch.

you know that the Americans despised this film? they considered it commie propaganda and a slander on hard-working oil executives. what a feckin' joke.

~Chara

Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear