Wild River (1960) - film review

In the wake of devastating floods in the early 1930s, the Federal Government decides to embark on a programme of dam building on the Tennessee River that will not only preserve the region but will also generate huge quantities of electricity.  Before the scheme can go ahead, the land surrounding the river has to be cleared and levelled.  Federal administrator Chuck Glover is given the unenviable task of persuading an 80-year-old matriarch, Ella Garth, to leave the home she has lived in for the past fifty years on a small island in the river.  The old woman stubbornly refuses to move and Chuck encounters further local hostility when he hires her black labourers to work at the same rate of pay as their white counterparts.  Chuck’s life is complicated further when he falls in love with Mrs Garth’s beautiful granddaughter, Carol...

For Elia Kazan, the making of Wild River was the fulfilment of a 25-year long dream.  Ever since he visited the Tennessee Valley in the early 1930s, he had longed to make a film depicting what he saw: landowners being driven from the area to make way for a massive dam construction project.  The film Kazan ultimately made in 1960, adapted from two novels (William Bradford Huie’s Mud on the Stars and Borden Deal Dunbar’s Cove) is one of his greatest achievements, a potent mix of melodrama and socio-economic study that is both informative and emotionally engaging.  It is also a thought-provoking work, since it questions the wisdom and morality of government schemes that irreversibly transform the landscape for socio-economic reasons.  The film also touches on racial issues, specifically the appalling way in which black workers were discriminated against in the southern states in the 1930s.  

Kazan was a director who is renowned for the authenticity and realism he brought to his films – most notably in his 1954 masterpiece On the Waterfront, which starred one of his Actors Studio protégés, Marlon Brando.  Wild River is just as noteworthy for its realism, but it has also an alluring lyrical quality which the location (Lake Chickamauga and the Hiwassee River), beautifully shot in crisp autumnal hues, naturally provides.  Kazan’s use of non-professional actors for extras strengthens the film’s naturalism and lends an almost documentary-style feel in places, setting it apart from most American films of this period.  

What makes Wild River particularly memorable are the outstanding contributions from its lead actors.   The chemistry between Montgomery Clift and Lee Remick is remarkable in that it conveys undercurrents of desire and emotional turbulence without explicit love scenes and overly dramatic confrontations.  At this time, Clift had begun his tragic downward slide that would soon result in a terrible facial disfigurement and an early death from combined drug and alcohol abuse.  In the last week of the shoot, he broke his promise to Kazan to stay away from hard liquor and very nearly put the kybosh on the film. 

Despite his increasing personal crises, Montgomery Clift remained a first rate actor  (of the Actors Studio "method" school) right to the end of his career and in Wild River he gives what is arguably his best performance.  Just as laudable is Jo Van Fleet who, although she was a mere 41 at the time, is extraordinarily convincing in her sympathetic portrayal of an octogenarian matriarch.  It may not have been a commercial success when it was first released, but Wild River is now held in great esteem and is considered one of the highpoints of Elia Kazan’s distinguished career as a filmmaker.

© James Travers 2008

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