A young bureaucrat for the Tennessee Valley Authority goes to rural Tennessee to oversee the building of a dam. He encounters opposition from the local people, in particular a farmer who objects to his employment (with pay) of local black laborers. Much of the plot revolves around the eviction of a stubborn octogenarian from her home on an island in the river, and the young man's love affair with that woman's widowed granddaughter. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation.
Acting
Jo Van Fleet's feral defiance—she'd steal Oscars if they gave her one.
Direction
Kazan making you smell the river, the fear, the unspoken want.
Cinematography
Ellsworth Fredericks captures drowning lands like funeral portraits.
Director
Elia Kazan
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Kazan shot on location during actual TVA dam construction; the rising waters are documentary footage, not effects. Montgomery Clift's declining health made his fragility onscreen accidentally perfect.
A rare Hollywood film of its era that confronts white Southern exploitation of Black labor without centring white saviour narratives—though Chuck's 'enlightenment' remains comfortingly limited.
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