Wild River

Fifty-fifth anniversary screening.

WILD RIVER (1960), set in Depression-era America, tells a provocative story of the conflict between an agent from the Tennessee Valley Authority and a proud, defiant older woman who refuses to sell her land in order to make way for a much needed dam. Oscar-nominated actors Montgomery Clift and Lee Remick star, and Oscar-winning actress Jo Van Fleet (only 40 at the time she made the film) plays the stubborn, 80-year-old matriarch, Ella Garth. This story raises issues about eminent domain that continue to be debated in the 21st century. Two-time Oscar-winning director Elia Kazan (A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront) considered this one of this most personal and pertinent films.

The film received mixed reviews at the time of its release, but Variety called it “an important motion picture… it has caught something timeless and essential in the human spirit and shaped it in the American image.” The Los Angeles Times agreed that it was “an excellently made, thought-provoking and turbulent film drama dealing with an important and certainly controversial part of American history.” Over the years the film’s reputation has grown. Several years ago, critic Dave Kehr declared, “This is probably Elia Kazan’s finest and deepest film.” In 2002 the film was inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, an honor reserved for American films of special social or artistic significance.

Wild River marked the film debut of Bruce Dern, who had worked with Kazan in the Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth the previous year. Dern went on to an illustrious film career spanning six decades. In the early 1960s he appeared with Bette Davis in Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte and also had a cameo role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie. Later in the 60s he co-starred in several Roger Corman movies, including The Wild Angels and The Trip. Among his many other films over the years have been Hitchcock’s Family Plot, The Cowboys (in which he had the dubious honor of killing John Wayne), Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running, Bob Rafelson’s The King of Marvin Gardens with Jack Nicholson, The Great Gatsby with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, Michael Ritchie’s Smile, and John Frankenheimer’s thriller, Black Sunday. He was nominated for his first Academy Award playing Jane Fonda’s husband in the 1978 film, Coming Home. Very recently, he was nominated for a second Oscar in Alexander Payne’s Nebraska. He co-starred in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained and in the HBO series, Big Love. Dern has a featured role in Tarantino’s eagerly awaited Christmas release, The Hateful Eight.

Post-screening Q&A moderated by LAFCA President Stephen Farber.