Le Salaire de la peur was first shown at the Cannes Film Festival on 15 April 1953, where it received the Palme d'Or.
Based upon Georges Arnaud’s 1950 novel of the same name (Arnaud was the pseudonym of Henri Girard, who had based some of the novel on his experiences in South America in the late 1940s), the screenplay was written by director Henri-Georges Clouzot and Jérome Geronimi (the pseudonym of the Jean Clouzot, the director’s brother).
Clouzot created his own production company, Véra Films - named after his wife (who plays the only woman to appear in the film and does not appear in the novel) - in order to have more independence in the production.
Le Salaire de la peur received the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in June and would go on to become a huge hit in France.
It was released in the US in 1955 as The Wages of Fear, with more than 30 minutes cut out (mostly dealing with the corrupt US oil company of the film). The original 153-minute original was not available in the US until 2017.
