BD 108 Wild River

[swo17]

Wild River



Regarded as one of the crowning achievements in the career of both director Elia Kazan (A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront) and actor Montgomery Clift, Wild River charted new territory for cinema at the dawn of the 1960s, combining psychology, eroticism, documentary realism, and exquisite pictorial beauty within the CinemaScope frame.

In the early 1930s, an administrator for the Tennessee Valley Authority (Clift) arrives in the small town of Garthville with the business of convincing an elderly landowner to sell her land to the government. Soon afterward, he's thrown into conflicts emotional (falling in love with the landowner's widowed granddaughter, played by Lee Remick, who is expected to marry another man) and societal (the employment of black labour on the authority's river project).

With its mix of the personal and the political, Wild River, in the words of critic and scholar Adrian Martin, shows us that "there is only, in each case and circumstance, the particular problem, the isolated breakthrough, and the irretrievable loss. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Wild River in a special Dual Format edition that presents the film on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK.

SPECIAL DUAL FORMAT (BLU-RAY + DVD) EDITION including:

• New 1080p transfer of the film on Blu-ray, with a progressive encode on the DVD
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
• New feature-length audio commentary with critics Glenn Kenny and Farran Smith Nehme
• Original theatrical trailer
• Gallery of behind-the-scenes and production stills
• 32-PAGE FULL COLOUR BOOKLET featuring a new essay on the film by critic Adrian Martin, remarks about the film by director Elia Kazan, and rare archival imagery

[domino harvey]

A great film, of course, and it's recent rescue and rediscovery status has been well-earned but given that you can already get it boxed together with three other films on Blu-ray means MoC's gonna have to provide some tempting exclusive extras to make it worthwhile

[Ashirg]

February 23. Available for pre-order at Amazon.co.uk

[Gregor Samsa]

One of the features has been revealed, and its a good one:

Farran Nehme @selfstyledsiren · Jan 14

Yes, now it can be told: @glenn__Kenny & I did the commentaries for @mastersofcinema's Blu-Rays of MAN OF THE WEST and WILD RIVER due 2/23.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Thank god - Schickel's commentary is next to worthless. (I have no idea why Fox didn't hire Foster Hirsch for that one.) Kenny and Nehme were great on The Gang's All Here so I'm really excited that they're back for this one and the Mann.

[hearthesilence]

Aw man, wish I hadn't bought Fox's BD. Glenn and the Siren's commentary is sure to be far better than Schickel's.

EDIT: I stand corrected - both aren't bad and I wouldn't say either is substantially better than the other.

[manicsounds]

DVDBeaver

[Drucker]

Blu Ray.com gives it 4 stars, but Svet indicts Fox with criticism of its altering color timing on titles like this and Desk Set. Which is such a shame, considering how great so many of their catalog releases look (especially black and white ones).

[hearthesilence]

DVDBeaver mentions that and I may have to agree, assuming the 35mm print I saw at BAM some years ago was accurate. I definitely noticed a warm, autumnal palette, and I don't get that feeling from these screenshots. Again, this is a few years ago, as much as five, so I'd have to see it again to be sure.

[tenia]

There most certainly is something wrong with the color scheme of the FOX restoration, especially looking at the shade it gives to faces in many shots. Moreover, it gives the impression (though it might actually be the case, I don't know the history of the movie production at all) that many sequences have shots / counter-shots which are not matching in terms of photography.

What is even more surprising is how the last 6 minutes don't look altered so much. Whites look more pure, and color scheme looks much more neutral, especially regarding what looks like a heavy blue-bias.

[hearthesilence]

I'm not sure it's better encoding on the BD disc - it looks like they tried a small touch of de-graining on the Fox Blu-Ray while Eureka just left it alone.

Anyway, both are very similar, and the Fox BD still looks very, very good, but it's a shame they had to take theirs down a notch.

Re: Schickel's commentary, I just came across this, and apparently he was rushed into the studio to do a commentary - urgency that turned out to be a complete waste because they wound up canceling the alleged February 2006 DVD release of the film, and it wasn't until Scorsese pushed Fox to release all of Kazan films that the film and the commentary saw a DVD/Blu-Ray release in late 2010.

[Drucker]

Blu Ray.com gives it 4 stars, but Svet indicts Fox with criticism of its altering color timing on titles like this and Desk Set. Which is such a shame, considering how great so many of their catalog releases look (especially black and white ones).

I am back, 11 years later, with some crow to eat. I have finally now actually seen this film in a 35mm print loaned from the George Eastman House (so presumably an original release print, though not called out as such). These colors are basically spot on. There is no additional "blueing" I feel is present at all. This shot with the trees in the distance a heavy blueish green and the vivid blue sky in this scene. In this shot too, the blues are much closer to what I just saw than the red from the DVD.

[Drucker]

Regarding the content of this film, I really am wowed by how good it was, and yet I'm left wondering some unanswered questions. Karina Longworth introduced the film, and she made a comment during her intro about in his autobiography, Kazan seems to have refuted his youthful progressivism by the time of making this film, and tried to turn Clift's character into a bad guy fighting against one brave person willing to make a stand. (and that perhaps this differed than how he would have treated the film earlier, though I missed this comment slightly).

Spoiler

It doesn't seem far fetched to read this film as: "It's regrettable that the local negroes are not integrated with the greater white population, but it's going to be messy when you do try to integrate them." The Wild River that Jo Van Fleet "prefers" is a necessary step in progress. Like the Civil Rights Movement going on at the same time, you're going to invite a mess of trouble if you move forward with your plans.

Is Kazan's film an Ambersons-esque view that is meant to give the viewer pause as they evaluate progress in history? The children are given a cleaner, electricifed house to grow up in, but no longer have the peace of the river flowing by their front door. Instead, they have the loud rumblings of cars in one of the final shots.

I'm still turning it over in my head. It really is hard to see whether Kazan is "picking a side" on this one. Perhaps the ambiguity is quite deliberate, but Longworth's intro threw me off if so!

[ChunkyLover]

Spoiler

Is Kazan's film an Ambersons-esque view that is meant to give the viewer pause as they evaluate progress in history? The children are given a cleaner, electricifed house to grow up in, but no longer have the peace of the river flowing by their front door. Instead, they have the loud rumblings of cars in one of the final shots.

Spoiler

I've felt that the film highlights the reality of "necessary evil": in order for the Garth family to survive, they have to leave their only home for not only their safety but for the rest of the community. Chuck does gain an empathy for the Garths but, at the end of the day, he's still a government employee sent there to do his job. There's a sense that the idea of "good vs. evil" isn't as black and white as it is in real life. To go back to your "evaluation" observation, when it comes to progress, it shows the audience that the "progression" is almost a downgrade. Sure, the Garth family might have a more "comfortable" home but at the cost of losing an entire island and being negated to a small patch of land.

This is still one of my favorite Kazan films.

[crimlaw]

Wild River is great, underrated Kazan. Deservedly on the National Film Registry.

Should be ideal for Criterion, if and when it manages to escape from Fox/Disney purgatory.

[hearthesilence]

Both TCM's website and a Screen Slate article from last year reference Kazan's memoir in talking about this, virtually quoting the same passage where Kazan reveals:

I'd conceived of this film years before as homage to the spirit of FDR; my hero was to be a resolute New Dealer engaged in the difficult task of convincing ‘reactionary’ country people that it was necessary, in the name of the public good, for them to move off their land and allow themselves to be relocated...Now I found my sympathies were with the obdurate old lady who lived on the island that was to be inundated and who refused to be patriotic, or whatever it took to allow herself to be moved.

Kazan rolled with this "and reinforced the pattern with every bit of my casting." He knew Clift would "be no match for the country people whom he'd have to convince of the 'greater good,' and certainly no physical match for any of them if it came to violence. Pictorially, the story would pit the weak against the strong-- in reverse." He then cast 44-year-old Jo Van Fleet, who specialized in characters much older than herself, because Kazan knew she "would eat Clift alive."

But I don't think Kazan is making the argument that what was done in the story is wrong, nor do I think Clift's character is meant to be the "bad guy." Kazan's maturation comes from realizing this isn't an unqualified good, there is a trade-off - a human cost and a deep loss - that comes with progress that's unavoidable. That's probably inherent in the term "greater good" - it implies there are other options that are "good" in their own way but ultimately fall short of a greater benefit to society as a whole, where the beneficiaries of those other options actually lose out.

That's what I've always gotten from the film and I think Clift's character completely understands that. Making him "weaker" helps because it puts him in a position where he has to see her point-of-view - if not to agree than at least to understand where she's coming from. It also strengthens the drama because IRL (at least today), if the government claims eminent domain, you're shit out of luck, they just push you out with brute force. Because that doesn't happen here, Clift's character has to convince her to leave. And because he does have the greater good on his side - they make it clear at the very beginning that this dam has to happen otherwise the flooding will continue to create mass destruction and claim people's lives every year in perpetuity - she has to listen and she has to understand even if it's difficult for her to accept the hard reality of it all. There's no diminishing the importance of what the government is trying to do with the dam, but there's no diminishing the personal cost to this woman either.

[The Narrator Returns]

I saw this last night as part of the same Karina Longworth tour and that excerpt from Kazan’s memoir is almost exactly what I remember her saying, rather than simplifying it to Clift as bad guy. There are cut-and-dry villains in it but the competing instincts to lionize Clift and Van Fleet give it a real charge while the original conception sounds pretty liberal-mushy.

Spoiler

It’s not just that they’re both right, it’s that that doesn’t matter when the end is so clearly delineated by much more powerful forces than the both of them. Clift is told Van Fleet will die if she’s forced from her land, she’s forced out and does die, Clift is told this would’ve happened with or without him but that’s hardly a comfort after a whole movie of him coming to see her as a person with strong principles rather than a mind to change. In the intro Longworth described Kazan’s memoir as bending over backwards to justify his shift in politics, but this struck me as parable of abandoned ideals from the all-time cinematic king of that. If he really did see himself in Van Fleet, it’s a short walk to wondering what he takes away from her final and suicidal surrender to government forces.

It’s a very good movie all around, absolutely gorgeous and painterly on a print (the aforementioned blue-green of the landscapes reminded me of Wanda), but the knottiness works in large part because the Clift and Lee Remick scenes are such an extraordinary and sincere counterpart. The subtlety of the notes they’re hitting seems more modern than where modern filmmaking/acting actually went, even something a little silly like how Remick fondles her dead husband’s shotgun. Remick still doesn’t have much competition for greatness in close-up acting, maybe just Lea Seydoux.