Wild River (1960)

Wild River is a film that I had been wanting to see for some time, only its not often shown on TV and last time I'd looked had not yet been made available on DVD. My interest in the film owes primarily to its setting and subject matter, the building of a dam by the TVA in the 1930's south. I had served my LDS mission in the south, literally the first street I tracted had a TVA dam at the end of it, and the Tennessee Valley Authority was still a major employer in the area generations after its founding. The film was directed by the great Elia Kazan, yet more reason for me to want to see it, and based on two different novels by two different authors about the early days of the TVA. The story concerns TVA agent Chuck Glover (Montgomery Clift) tasked with coaxing a family off the river island its inhabited for generations, as a new dam is going to cause the area to become completely submerged in water. The family that lives on the island is headed by stubborn but dignified matriarch Ella Garth (Jo Van Fleet, playing well above her age as usual, and doing an excellent job at it as usual) who refuses to leave, Clift quickly concludes that the only person who might be able to get Ella off the island is her favored granddaughter Carol (Lee Remick), a young mother and widow. Chuck and Carol quickly find that they click with each other, creating a love triangle with Carol's older suitor Walter Clark (Frank Overton) who is probably the nicest guy in the community, only Carol doesn't love him.

The film has uniformly strong performances, a richly realized setting and a strong screenplay, but the thing that made it work for me is the love story between Chuck and Carol. It builds wonderfully, the conflict these characters feel about it is explored, and there is a nice chemistry between the leads as they try to temper down an undeniable passion that puts each in an awkward situation. The film handles all of this in a very classy fashion, it implies sex without ever showing it or going out and saying it, it has got to be one of the later example of a Motion Picture Production Code approach to this subject, and I found that refreshing with the hay day of the 1960's sex comedy being just a few years away. Wild River is a film that should probably be better known then it is, on par with the best stuff to come out of the industry in this period, I really enjoyed it. ****