Elia Kazan’s Wild River (1960) is one of those overlooked
movie gems long overdue for audiences’ rediscovery. It is worthy not only of
our renewed viewing, but an unerring appreciation for Kazan’s breadth and prowess
as a film maker. That this film has been so fundamentally forgotten by the
general public for so long is indeed a tragedy. For in Wild River Kazan manages to do what, arguably, Kazan always did
best; pick at the scab of a social injustice, looking at the issue from both
sides, ascribe no blame to either side, discover the humanity in the cause
itself, and dissect the essential flaws in the characters inhabiting his
narrative to reveal a parable about human suffrage and redemption. In this
latter respect, Kazan is working with superior talents; Montgomery Clift, Jo
Van Fleet and Lee Remick, each giving powerful performances that have not aged
since the movie was made.
It should be
noted that the trajectory of Montgomery Clift’s movie career was forever
changed by a 1956 automobile accident. Until then he had been primarily known
as a devilishly handsome leading man, capable of interjecting a complexity of
deep-rooted angst and inner turmoil into his characterizations. But the
gruesome injuries sustained as a result of his smashing into a telephone pole
did more than alter his looks. It seems to have deprived Clift of that thin
veneer so necessary to keep his true self guarded from the outside world. It is
as though the accident exposed his closeted insecurities. For the rest of his
career Clift constantly played his heroes with an awkward stutter, becoming all
too easily flustered and occasionally over dramatic in his attempts to keep the
outsider’s fascination with his deteriorating sense of self at bay. In the end,
nothing Clift did seemed to work. His excruciatingly deliberate mental and
physical decline – the latter the result of a bout of dysentery – has been
described as the slowest suicide on record.
In Wild River we get glimmers of Clift on
the wane; the way he allows his character, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) administrator
Chuck Glover, to be readily manhandled by both men and women alike throughout
the narrative, suggests the man – instead of his fictional alter ego – simply
going through the motions in a role, career and life he so desperately wants to
escape. That isn’t to suggest that Clift phones in his performance in Wild River. On the contrary, he is both
genuine and affecting as the put upon quiet man, desperate to evict a tired old
woman from her beloved homestead before a nearby dam floods her property. But
there is also a sense of weariness to Clift. Arguably, this bodes well with
both his character and the film’s subject matter – but upon closer inspection
the choices he makes seem inspired more by his own exhaustion than any artistic
merit.
At the crux of
Wild River is a problematic romance
between a man, who has allowed his social conscience to deprive him of human
intimacy, and a careworn twenty-something widow desperate to rekindle her
youthful passions; even if the material chosen to replace her late husband is
less of a man and even more the softy. The confusion over just what place the
middle aged Chuck (Clift) intends to occupy in this young girl’s life goes
beyond what we now know about Clift’s own proclivity as a practicing
homosexual. As example, knowing that
Rock Hudson was gay today does not spoil the charm of his performances as a
romantic leading man opposite Elizabeth Taylor (Giant), or Doris Day (Pillow
Talk) back then, because Hudson’s manufactured persona is stronger than the
reality hidden behind the myth of his own star power. However, in Clift’s case,
knowing he was gay adds yet another layer of complexity to his performance as
Chuck Glover – one not anticipated or perhaps even aspired to, but nevertheless
present and distracting as the film’s romantic scenario gets repeatedly sidelined.
Wild River opens with a devastating B&W montage of 1937’s
Ohio River Flood – a massive natural disaster that claimed 385 lives and left
hundreds homeless after its apocalyptic devastation. We transition to color footage: the cabin of
a plane, presumably flying overhead and surveying the wreckage, but actually a
very obvious studio bound process shot married to aerial footage photographed
by a second unit. Chuck Glover arrives in a small Tennessee backwater as the
new administrator of the Tennessee Valley Authority. The TVA is a government
organization funded by the Roosevelt administration for the express purpose of
appropriating local farmland. Chuck is the third administrator to be given this
plum assignment; convincing the more stalwart locals to agree to their
relocation. But eighty year old Ella Garth (Jo Van Fleet), who lives on a
remote island in the middle of the river, isn’t about to go quietly. In fact,
she absolutely refuses to decamp.
Chuck’s first
attempt to convince Ella is a complete disaster when her nephew, Jo John (Big
Jeff Bess) takes it into himself to toss Chuck into the icy cold waters. Ella’s
granddaughter, Carol (Lee Remick) is more reticent in her judgments. She
understands well enough that the government will win this battle in the end.
Her concern is for her grandmother’s safety if the law is invoked to forcibly
remove them from their land. Carol befriends and follows Chuck to the mainland.
She tells him about her late husband Jim Baldwin, and shows him the house they
were once so happy to live in with their two children, Jim Jr. (Jim Menard) and
Barbara (Judy Harris).
Carol leaves
out a few details, however – chiefly that she has begun seeing Walter Clark
(Frank Overton); a man for whom she has no romantic feelings but who undeniably
desires to become her second husband and a father to her two children. In the
meantime, Ella grants Chuck a second audience on her farm. She explains that her
late husband is buried on this land and that she too will one day soon be laid
in the earth next to his. She then attempts to explain the incongruous nature
of the government’s plan to take her land away without her consent by offering
one of her hired hands money for his beloved dog. When the man refuses to sell
the animal, Ella tells him that it doesn’t matter, because whatever his
decision she intends to take the dog anyway; thus proving her point.
Chuck is sympathetic
to Ella. Moreover, he begins to understand how utterly lost she would be without
the isolation of the island as her comfort. Regrettably, the decision is not
his to make. In the meantime Walter has joined Sy Moore (Malcolm Atterbury) and
Hank Bailey (Albert Salmi) – a pair of well meaning, but thuggish local
businessmen who want Chuck and the TVA out of their county permanently –
particularly after Chuck implements a plan that hires ‘coloreds’ to work
alongside white laborers and pays both the same fair wage.
After
witnessing an overnight rendezvous between Carol and Chuck through the window
of her shack, Walter agrees to set Chuck up for a little homecoming of his own.
At the last possible moment, however, Walter get cold feet and backs out of
this arrangement, pleading with Chuck not to return to his apartment in town
where Hank is waiting for him. Against his better judgment Chuck goes upstairs
anyway. Hank demands to be paid four dollars as compensation for a ‘colored’
who crossed over into Chuck’s work program. When Chuck refuses to pay, Hank
beats him up and takes the money anyway.
Shortly
thereafter, Chuck attempts to walk away from Carol – presumably because his
work in the region will soon come to an end. Instead he realizes he has fallen
in love with her. The two elope to a neighboring county and are married by a Justice
of the Peace. Several nights later Hank and Walter descend on Carol’s house
with a lynch mob. Chuck is pummeled by Hank. Carol is knocked unconscious with
a rock. The mob smashes into Carol’s house with a truck and overturn Chuck’s
TVA car, dumping it into the river.
Realizing that
time has run out, Chuck evokes the law to forcibly evict Ella from her land. In
preparation for the already inevitable Chuck has arranged for a comfortable
house and enough land to keep Ella, her hired man and her beloved cow together.
The farm is leveled by government workers and the house burned to the ground.
As the floodgates of the dam are opened and the water rises, swallowing the
island, Chuck receives word from Carol that Ella has quietly died. The film
ends with Chuck, Carol and her two children leaving the region in the same
plane that brought Chuck to the area in the first place.
Wild River is an exceptionally well crafted drama; solidly acted
and with a subliminal socialist undercurrent that critiques the role government
has in the life of an individual. Based on competing novels by William Bradford
Huie and Borden Deal, Paul Osborn’s screenplay makes its points subtly without
becoming sanctimonious. Kazan’s direction yields to a rich tapestry of star
caliber performances; the standout arguably belonging to Jo Van Fleet as the
curmudgeonly last hold out on the river. A sadly underrated actress today, Van
Fleet is exceptionally good herein; achieving a sustained likability, despite
her more obvious outward bitterness.
Clift is very
good in his confrontations with Van Fleet. The two share some wonderful sparring
that crackles across the screen with a genuine excitement. The same, regrettably, cannot be said for
Clift’s emoting opposite Lee Remick. He seems, if not incapable, then entirely
unwilling to go the distance in order to make their relationship believable.
Chuck’s acquiescence to Carol’s proposal of marriage is perfunctory at best;
Clift’s interaction well-rehearsed yet undeniably awkward. Somehow, Clift is
unable to convince us that Chuck cares for Carol – not just sexually, but
emotionally or perhaps at all. This lack of on screen chemistry leaves the
movie with a gaping hole through its middle – only superficially plugged by some
deft writing and believable vignettes that divert the action away from the
romance and carry us through to the final act.
It is to Elia
Kazan’s credit that despite this glaring misfire Wild River is compelling to watch. Kazan’s pacing is unencumbered
by Cinemascope – its screen proportions having proved the undoing for so many
other great film makers along the way. But Kazan uses the 2:35:1 aspect ratio
effectively, his compositions quite natural, yet artistic at the same time. In
the final analysis, Wild River is a
minor work in Kazan’s canon, but one that deserves much more playtime than it
has been given in the intervening decades.
Fox Home
Video’s Blu-ray is only a single layer transfer, and infrequently the image
tends to look thin, with pale colors that favor a strange teal palette. Eyes,
that I assume were blue at one point, have an unnatural robin’s egg pallor.
Flesh tones are sometimes ruddy and occasionally a tad too pink. Overall, we
get crisp visuals with a very solid rendering of fine detail and fairly
accurate contrast that only occasionally looks weak. I am not entirely certain
how much better the film might have looked if the full 50 gigabytes had been
utilized on this disc, but I’ll venture a guess that sharpness and grain
structure would be the primary benefactors.
While the
overall image doesn’t look as painfully waxen as some Fox Blu-rays have in the
past, there is smoothness to the visuals throughout that I am entirely certain is
not in keeping with the original Eastman stock. The audio is 5.1 DTS – and very
well represented with directionalized dialogue and SFX. You won’t be blown away
by this sonic experience, except that it sounds very indigenous to its source
material and that’s very good indeed. Extras are limited to an audio commentary
and theatrical trailer. Bottom line: recommended.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
3.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
3.5
EXTRAS
1
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