Wild River blurs documentary and fiction, tackles racism and segregation in America’s south, addresses the predicaments of little people coming face to face with the will of a behemoth of a government, considers the nature of progress and – maybe a minor concern in the light of these – is also an against-the-odds romance. If all that weren’t enough, it was seen in cinemas in über-panoramic CinemaScope. Wild River was ambitious.
Released in 1960, Wild River was the last film Elia Kazan made while under contract to Twentieth Century Fox and followed 1957’s sly satire A Face In the Crowd. The booklet of this release quotes Kazan saying Fox “didn’t want to make Wild River, showed no interest, and sort of hated it when they saw it.” That may have been churlish when the director’s record included A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, East of Eden and Baby Doll. But with something this rich, it’s possible to see his paymasters' point.
The film centres on the efforts of Montgomery Clift’s Chuck Glover to get the occupants of a river-centre island close to Garthville, Tennessee to move. An officer of the Tennessee Valley Authority, Glover works for the body charged by the US government in 1933 under the New Deal with managing the flood-prone river – actual documentary footage of the floods is seen – and purchasing the land necessary to enable the scheme. Ironically, the island is to be flooded in the name of improvement. Its presiding matriarch is not to be moved. Glover and young widow Carol Garth Baldwin (a method-acting Lee Remick, pictured right) are drawn to each other. In the end, he and government win out. On the way he encounters the racism of locals who don’t like his even attitude towards local blacks and is attacked one-on-one and by a mob. Carol’s child is put at risk. Kazan obviously had no truck with either the blunt instruments of state or racism.
Although not strictly a film with a civil rights theme, Kazan’s uncompromising state-of-the-nation messages were played with subtlety. Clift, then bedevilled by drug dependency and self-reproach over his homosexuality, is understated but forceful as Glover – the agent is not to be dissuaded from his task, but is still human. All this takes place in a luxurious, John Ford-esque wide-screen setting. With an insightful essay in the accompanying booklet as a vital bonus, the bold, provocative Wild River is a must.
Overleaf: watch a clip from the restored Wild River
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