- Starring
- Montgomery Clift, Lee Remick, Jo Van Fleet
- Writer
- Paul Osborn
- Director
- Elia Kazan
- Rating
- n/a
- Running Time
- 110 minutes
Overall Score
Rating Summary
Wild River is not a well-known Elia Kazan film as when we think of the director, films like A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, or East of Eden arguably come to mind. While this film never had the popularity of those previous titles, it’s still a very strong entry to his filmography.
Wild River saw Montgomery Clift plays Chuck Glover, a TVA agent going to rural Tennessee to convince an old woman named Ella Garth (Fleet) that she needs to give up her land and move somewhere else, so that TVA can build a dam in the area. There, he and her granddaughter Carol Garth Baldwin (Remick) fall in love. The problem is: Ella is not selling her land not even for all the money in the world. Chuck gets antagonized by the entire population of the small town, as they see him as the representation of a large conglomerate trying to take honest people from their lands.
Kazan was not a stranger to socially conscious subjects. Gentlemen’s Agreement dealt with anti-Semitism; Pinky was about racism; Wild River is about how progress ran over people all over the country, and how it was especially destructive to rural population. And the film is a powerful example of that message, especially because it gave its resistance voice to in the form of the extraordinary character of Ella. An old woman with strong moral roots and even stronger stubbornness, Ella speaks for the people of the town who do not want to be bullied into accepting TVA’s offer to sell their land. She has many reasons for keeping her property, and she disclosure some of them during the course of the film, but there is a main one, and it’s quite simple: because she doesn’t want to. And there’s no reasoning with her right to do whatever she wants with her land.
Ella becomes such a powerful character because of the strengths of Van Fleet, who gives her so much complexity. Fleet was a very particular kind of actress, and she projects a wisdom to Ella that comes off both stubborn and more intelligent than most. And Van Fleet plays her to perfection, even being about 35 to 40 years younger than the character. Ella is 80-something and Van Fleet was just 45. Her posture, her inflections, the way she moves, fantastic. Meanwhile, Remick and Clift follow her lead, turning in good performances. Clift was coming out of a very complicated period in his life, and he is not at the top of his game but still managed to deliver. Remick, a year after a very strong turn in Anatomy of a Murder shows a completely different side of her talents as Clara, a young, grieving widow.
In the end, perhaps the best part of Wind River was its story: it’s a simple tale, but it packs such a powerful punch. Progress is coming over, and it won’t ask permission to impose itself to everyone, including those who don’t want it. But in doing that, is it actually progress at all?
*still courtesy of 20th Century Studios*
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