Sightlines · reception
How Sorcerer was received
1977 · William Friedkin · Sorcerer on Sightlines
The arc
A notorious 1977 flop — a punishing shoot, a $20M+ budget, and the misfortune of opening weeks after Star Wars buried it. Decades later, championed by critics and a 2013 restoration Friedkin fought in court to make happen, it's now widely called one of the great American films of the '70s.
What’s debated
The eternal fight: does it actually surpass Clouzot's The Wages of Fear, or is calling it 'better than the original' the ultimate contrarian-cinephile flex?
Its footprint
The rope-bridge-in-a-storm sequence is one of cinema's most referenced images of pure white-knuckle tension, and Tangerine Dream's pulsing electronic score became a touchstone for the whole synth-score lineage that followed.
Where it stands
The definitive flop-to-masterpiece rehabilitation story — a New Hollywood casualty turned Letterboxd-era essential, and the film Friedkin himself called his best.
Did you know? Sorcerer opened at Mann's Chinese Theatre by displacing Star Wars — and did so badly that the theater brought Star Wars back within weeks. The title, meant to evoke fate (it's painted on one of the trucks), also misled audiences expecting another Exorcist.
Named by the director
- The Wages of Fear (1953) — Friedkin openly built on Clouzot's film while insisting his was a new adaptation of the Georges Arnaud novel, not a remake — and he sought Clouzot's blessing.
- Henri-Georges Clouzot — Friedkin dedicated Sorcerer to Clouzot on screen, calling him a master he was honoring rather than copying.