Wild stream
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Wild stream |
| Original title | Wild River |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1960 |
| length | 105 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Elia Kazan |
| script | Paul Osborn |
| production | Elia Kazan |
| music | Kenyon Hopkins |
| camera | Ellsworth Fredericks |
| cut | William H. Reynolds |
| occupation | |
| |
Wilder Strom (Original Title: Wild River ) is an American film directed by Elia Kazan from 1960. Paul Osborn adapted stories by Borden Deal ( Dunbar's Cove ) and William Bradford Huie ( Mud on the Stars ) for the screenplay .
action
The film is set in the 1930 's during the Great Depression in Alabama and after a major flood disaster in Tennessee Valley . A dam is being built to prevent future disasters and give people work. The engineer Chuck Glover worked for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and comes in the valley to ensure that the people in question leave their homes and sell their land for the dam project to the TVA. The people shaken by the crisis are ready for it too; only old Ella Garth is stubborn and unwilling to leave her home, an island in the river, for money. She would rather die than give up an inch of her property.
Glover falls in love with the old woman's granddaughter, Carol Garth Baldwin, a widowed mother, and marries her “overnight” before the justice of the peace. The engineer, convinced of progress, recognizes the real motives of the old lady and empathizes with her. At the same time he recruits the workers, who are mostly Afro-Americans, and gives them new jobs with higher wages, which also causes him trouble with some white valley dwellers, still racist southerners. Ultimately, the island is expropriated and the dam is closed. The river floods the island except for a small part, the cemetery. The film ends with the death of the old lady, her burial in the island cemetery and the departure of the engineer with his new family.
background
Montgomery Clift , who suffered from depression and alcohol addiction, had to sign before filming that he would not touch a drop of alcohol during the filming. With the help of Lee Remick and Jo Van Fleet , the sensitive artist managed to stay dry while filming. However, Clift had to play a scene in which his character Chuck Glover gets completely drunk out of frustration.
The theater actress Jo Van Fleet, who had already played under Kazan's direction in Beyond Eden , was only half the age of the character of the old woman Ella Garth.
Reviews
"Waiting indecisively between a socially critical study and an individual love story, the epic film sometimes offers very soulful entertainment."
“Director Elia Kazan ( Fist in the Neck ) and author Paul Osborn extracted a peasant blood and soil ballad from two novels about the construction of the Tennessee Dam under Roosevelt's New Deal program . In the mixed works, the efforts of the government agent to remove a stubborn old woman from her flood-threatened farm are only marginally connected with the hero's love for a young widow; and some attacks against southern racial prejudices appear to have been completely patched in. Even the director, who was praised as a Marlon Brando tamer, was not able to release the main actor Montgomery Clift from mimic paralysis. "
Awards
The film was invited to the competition for the Golden Bear at the Berlinale 1960 , but received nothing at the award ceremony.
In 2002 Wilder Strom was admitted to the National Film Registry .
Web links
- Wild River in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Wilder Strom in the OFDb
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wild stream. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ cf. spiegel.de