H-G Clouzot's "existential" adventure yarn, originally released in the U.S. at 105 minutes in the mid-Fifties, had forty-three minutes restored to it for re-release a quarter-century later. As it turns out, there are almost exactly forty-three minutes till the Latin American hellhole awakens to news of a fire in the nearby oil fields, and another fifteen minutes till four down-and-out expatriates are rounded up to drive two trucks of nitroglycerine over treacherous back roads. Which means that most of the recovered footage is devoted just to setting up an atmosphere of spit-in-your-face, Zola-esque naturalism. (Clouzot, however, relaxes the naturalism for the soft-focus shots of his wife, Vera.) Which means, in addition, that you can see for yourself why an American importer, with perhaps higher priorities than "existentialism," might have chosen to cut through to the main order of business. The movie isn't really good enough to support much sanctimoniousness. The sequence on the "corrugated" road is well timed, even though it violates its own logic. And the maneuvering of the trucks on a hillside platform of rotted wood is intensified to such degree as spoils you for the upcoming boulder in the road and pool of petrol. As one of the cast members somewhere remarks: "It's too much." In truth, it's almost silly. The disintegration of Charles Vanel's character and the stiffening of Yves Montand's are more intriguing developments than any of their external causes. (1953) — Duncan Shepherd