Wilder Strom

Once again I endured American Movie Classics' merciless mangling of one of their rarely shown archival masterpieces, "Wild River," shown non-letterboxed, interrupted excessively by endless strings of commercials and their completely unpalatable promotions for showings of future films and special programs. I've complained about this in other IMDb comments I've posted so I won't give into the almost irresistible temptation to rail against AMC once more. That said...

This film contains one of the all-time greatest performances by an American actress that it is possible to see. Jo Van Fleet is so convincing as the intransigent matriarch, who refuses to leave her island, that the injustice of her not receiving an Academy Award nomination for her performance still rankles. Perhaps the members of the Academy could not decide to grant her a nomination as the lead actress or as an actress in a supporting role and muffed the chance to show their admiration. Other comments here aptly point out all of the other outstanding elements in this film and the pain of seeing it so diminished in this TV broadcast (I did see it during its theatrical release, but had forgotten how eloquently most of it was done.) was, nevertheless, worthwhile. I join others who have expressed a desire for a DVD release (where the CinemaScope ratio would be approximated, we can hope.) Wish we could persuade Fox Classics to see if the response to a video audience would exceed the neglect this film was subjected to during its first exposure to the paying public.