tieman64
In response to the Great Depression, the United States initiated the "New Deal", a series of domestic projects (and reforms) designed to assist and placate the poor. One such project was the Tennessee Valley Authority. A federally owned corporation, the TVA attempted to provide flood relief, economic development, jobs and electricity for the Depression afflicted Tennessee Valley.Elia Kazan's "Wild River" stars Montgomery Clift as Chuck Glover, a TVA planning commissioner. Chuck's responsible for relocating towns and villages surrounding a recently erected hydroelectric dam. Standing in the way of this "progress" is Ella Garth (Jo Van Fleet), an elderly matriarch who owns Garth Island. For the hydroelectric project to be completed, Chuck must remove Garth from the island. Taking Garth's side are her family members and several black workers.An odd and at times very original film, "Wild River" is preoccupied with the twin sides of progress. Chuck's hydroelectric dam brings "development" for many in rural Tennessee, but also uproots communities and removes thousands from their land. More than this, this "progress" results in many self-sufficient, agrarian landowners (and workers) being absorbed into a new mode of social organisation. Those displaced from their land may be compensated with houses, electricity and property, but also now find themselves dependent upon employers, the state and those with capital.But whilst Kazan, a jaded communist, shows state and private employers (often operating in cahoots) robbing the individual of a certain "self sufficiency", he is careful to also show the opposite. Old Ella Garth is your typical rugged individualist. A "self made" woman, she's a caricature of those riled up Southern conservatives who're always moaning about the "gubbament" imposing its will upon others "for their own good". But Kazan makes it clear that Garth herself relies upon a small army of black workers, many of whom live in terrible conditions. It is not difficult to see why these blacks would run to Chuck and so reject the seemingly "benign" Ella Garth.Indeed, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, a series of violent floods changed the voting patterns of African Americans, leading directly to the Democratic Party's rise to power. During these floods, places like Mississippi and Tennessee saw the loss of arable land. Along the Mississippi River alone, some 127,000 miles of land was swamped, and more than one million homes were destroyed; 1 percent of the country's population at the time. Most of these were African Americans, hundreds of thousands of whom fled to refugee camps. In these camps, policed by the National Guard, no one could enter or leave without a pass and thousands were forced to work for no wages and toil at gunpoint. Torn from their land by the floods, these blacks slowly found themselves becoming part of a kind of neo slave caste. Before and after these floods, things for them were no better, many caught in debt servitude, sharecropping, Jim Crow segregation, hounded by lynch laws and Ku Klux Klan riders and so forth. It's thus no surprise that many African Americans saw New Dealers as offering a "way out".Kazan's "Wild River" doesn't go into all of this. What Kazan does well, though, is show how the New Deal merely led to new types of problems. Once they leave her, Ella Garth's black and white workers aren't emancipated, but enfolded into a new model of exploitation. Their wages pushed down, beholden to others and stripped of their autonomy, they become a new type of work horse."Wild River" sports a subplot involving Chuck's romance with Carol (Lee Remick), a relative of Ella Garth. But does Chuck honestly love Carol? Is his relationship with her a means of gaining trust with the family and so undermining Ella? Ironically, Chuck's abuse of power and authority – he attempts to have Ella judged mentally incompetent – echoes the tactics used by Carol. When Chuck and Carol's romance comes at an impasse, for example, she essentially blackmails Chuck into marriage. Chuck agrees to this marriage, but there is a sense that, though the duo love each another, their romance is founded upon subtle games of manipulation."Wild River" is one of Kazan's most exquisitely photographed films. It unfolds at a leisurely pace, capturing the tempo of a Southern life which explodes only occasionally into bouts of violence or racial hysteria. A wooden raft becomes the film's chief motif, a raggedy structure which bridges the old world and the new. Chuck spends most of the film floating back and forth on this raft, attempting to get others to join him on his journey into the "future". It's a future which is sceptically portrayed, Kazan unsure of "progress", how progress is "sold", who it actually benefits and what its hidden ramifications are. For all its flaws, the films is unique in the way it captures a shift in the very way America was socially organised.7.5/10 – Dull and dated in many places, and unable to fully exploit an interesting premise, "Wild River" is nevertheless one of the most interesting melodramas of the late 1950s. See Ken Loach's "Bread and Roses" and Mark Rydell's "The River".
jartell
I just found this reference on IMDb to this powerful movie that I saw on TV when I was a child. Actually, for a strange reason, after seeing in the news the flooding taking place in the Midwest these days (March 27, 2009) I recalled the images on this movie so vividly. But of course, for a kid's imagination nothing could be more unforgettable than the beauty of Lee Remick. And I loved the chemistry taking place between her and Monty Cliff. Now, however, reading the comments in this page I realize that I had not paid enough attention to the performance of Jo Van Fleet as the matriarch who refuses to comply to the government's request to leave her land. And in addition to this, "Wild River" happens to be an Elia Kazan movie! I've been searching this film for years and I just realized that I couldn't find it simply because there is not a DVD available. Not even a VHS copy! That's outrageous! Please, everyone sensible to good movies should ask the same to the powers that be: We want a DVD of "Wild River"!
