"Wages of Fear" by Henri-Georges Clouzot (1952)

I saw this film about 40 years ago in the Village in Manhattan, across the river from Brooklyn, where I lived. It held me mesmerized with its myriad of languages and cultural differences. Little did I know that in a few short years I would be one of the characters in a similar drama; many times; as I worked aboard oil-tankers, transporting millions of gallons of fuel on ships which were often crewed by merchant seamen who did not speak the same language as one another. When you’re working with millions of gallons of fuel, this can become a concern, and so you have to learn how to communicate; and trust; the people with whom you are working. This film has always reminded me of that. So, when it beckoned from the foreign film section of the library, it was a natural for me to pick it up and take it home.

I was very interested with how I might view it differently after all these years; as well as my own personal experiences. Not much has changed in my interpretation of the film. Basically it is the story of 4 men who work for an oil company in South America. They are tasked with the most dangerous mission of all; they are to transport the nitroglycerine which is needed at an oil field located in the jungle. To get there they will have to transport the volatile cargo over some very rough terrain.

The men are divided into two teams, each with a truck of nitro to deliver to the same location. The men develop a sort of rivalry between them; as they struggle not only against their own uncertainty about the mission at hand; but also begin to question the validity of their own motives in undertaking the job in the first place.

A lot of things have changed over the years, and the village life depicted in this film was largely on the way out when I was traveling. Still, I did get to a number of places which were almost identical to the villages and airstrips shown in the movie. And I met a lot of the same characters, too. Some were good; and some bad. I’m glad that I did. No doubt these places still exist, but they have grown fewer and further between. Also, at the time this film was made, donkeys and burros really did compete for space on the road and in the marketplaces.

Filmed using 4 different languages; including English in the appropriate parts; lends a reality to the film, as that is the way it is when working overseas. You either learn to communicate with one another; using a variety of methods; or you fail at your assignment. In the end it’s all about teamwork, and the desire to prevail. This film captures; perfectly; the grit of the do or die nature inherent in some of the hardest jobs on earth, as well as the motivations behind those who take on those tasks.

Note: I have aged since I last saw this film; and though I can still pick out parts of the foreign languages, I found the English sub-titles to be very helpful.

"Only Angels Have Wings" with Cary Grant, Thomas Mitchell and Jean Arthur (1939)

“Only Angels have Wings” is almost a blueprint for Howard Hawks’ later classic adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s “To Have, and to Have Not”. Even some of the most noteworthy lines are almost identical. The real difference in the two films is not so much the location of the story; a mountain pass in South America versus an island in the Caribbean; but the actors themselves.

In this film, Cary Grant plays cynical Geoff Carter, the leader of a group of cargo planes located in the jungles of South America, where they fly mail, as well as any cargo, anywhere, at any time.

Brooklyn born Bonnie Lee, played by Jean Arthur, puts in by boat to a small airstrip somewhere in South America. To fly out, the pilots must risk great danger as they go through the mountain passage, which is always clouded by fog, and even; at that altitude; sometimes snow.

It is in this environment that Bonnie meets, and falls for Geoff, who is distant and cold towards her. He has seen too much of life to get attached to anyone, or anything; yet there is something between the two that threatens to grow into more. This only makes her more hopeful, even as it repels him further away.

When another pilot, Bat Mac Pherson, played by Richard Barthelmess, shows up with his wife Judy, played by sultry Rita Hayworth, things get complicated. It seems that, at some point in the past, Bat bailed out of a plane ahead of his crew, which included the brother of Geoff’s right hand man, fellow pilot Kid Dabb, played by Thomas Mitchell, causing his death. Bad blood is boiling, and it seems as if only bad can come of it.

Written by Paul Donahue, and directed by the incomparable Howard Hawks, this film sizzles as events unfold and lives are altered. Sig Ruman plays the Dutchman, which is to say that he basically plays himself. You get the same feeling as you watch Noah Beery Jr. play pilot Joe Souther. Though the story takes place in the fictional port of Barranca, I can tell you from experience, that as late as the 1980’s, ports like these still existed. And, films like this one put me on the path to finding them.

Fordlandia by Greg Grandin

The remarkable thing about this book is the way in which the author has approached such an expansive and multi faceted subject. And that’s just in reference to Henry Ford as a person! Add to this already complex individual some very radical ideas concerning Industry and you can easily get lost!

But Mr. Grandin doesn’t get lost at all. He leads the reader on a carefully laid out journey from the Ford plant in Michigan to the jungles of Brazil.

In the 1920’s, as America prospered, teetering towards the Great Depression, Henry Ford released his newest creation, the Model “A” Ford. With it's varied colors and other added features it was quite a departure from the earlier Model “T”. Available to almost every American in those days of easy credit it became a mainstay of the newly emerging road trips that ever more Americans were discovering.

Fords factory techniques of mass production and his progressive wage of $5 a day were legendary. The mass production allowed for greater profit for the owner and greater wages for the working man.

But this all came with a price. Time management experts followed the worker, recording his every move, constantly looking to increase productivity and profits.

At this same time Mr. Ford was privately engaged in many pursuits. From soybeans as a “do all” product encompassing plastics, food, fibers and a myriad of liquid solvents, to lobbying for new regional currencies based on hydro electric outputs, Mr. Ford was a very busy, thinking man. And he expected as much from his employees as well.

He was also engaged in newspaper publishing with his own, decidedly Anti-Semitic newspaper.

But his real passion was to create a rubber producing state in the Brazilian rain forests. With a need for tires on his automobiles he was intent on carving out an empire in the jungle. He envisioned bringing American middle class life to the indigenous people of Brazil. This was a fantastic undertaking,fraught with peril.

He established “Fordlandia”, as it came to be known, along the banks of the Tapajos River, a tributary of the Amazon River which flows to the Atlantic Ocean. He was intent on cutting out the middle man and again, increasing profits. The way things turned out, or didn’t, make for quite a read!

How do you teach an indigenous people factory style rules? And how do you justify trying to regulate the lives of these people? Is their compliance really voluntary, or is it self imposed slavery? Great questions that are all posed within this book.

There are some interesting tid bits as well. For instance,the first "in flight movie" was shown on a Ford Tri Motor Airplane. It was a Harold Lloyd comedy about the last horse drawn streetcar in New York City.

That the author manages to take the reader on such a complex trip through the jungles of the Amazon, as well as the corporate boardrooms of Detroit, in such a coherent manner is a tribute to his ability as a writer.