Keeping It Local

In the mid-1950s, still tainted by the scandal of his naming names to the House Un-American Activities Committee, director Elia Kazan resolved to make a film about the early years of the Tennessee Valley Authority. He bought the rights to a novel about an old woman who refuses to sell her homestead, and thus stands directly in the path of progress. In his autobiography, A Life, Kazan wrote that he initially sided with TVA, meaning to honor the liberal intentions of the New Deal and its progressive legacy. But by the time he made the movie, in 1959, he found that his sympathies had changed. He now sided with the woman, and the strength and rural tradition that she represented.

Rather than fight this shift in his sympathies, Kazan wrote, he worked it into every aspect of the film. The weakness in his troubled leading man, Montgomery Clift, who had been disfigured in a car accident, fit Kazan’s new conception of the TVA-man hero as an ineffectual city slicker. By contrast, the women were forces of nature. The woman in her 80s (played by 45-year-old Jo Van Fleet) had the solidity of bedrock. The actress playing her granddaughter, Lee Remick (in a role Kazan reportedly considered for the young June Carter Cash), came across as the sexual aggressor in the movie’s central love story. Kazan shot in East Tennessee, surrounding veteran character actors—and a newcomer named Bruce Dern—with inexperienced locals for authenticity.

The result, 1960’s Wild River, may be the best movie of the late director’s career—and yes, that includes On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire. Though Kazan, who died Sept. 28, called the movie one of his favorites, it wasn’t a hit, and public screenings have been few in the years since. It gets a rare showing 4 p.m. this Sunday as part of the Frist Center’s “Two Days From the Archives: Films of Tennessee From the Nashville Film Festival,” a festival held in conjunction with the Frist’s current “Art of Tennessee” exhibition.

Alas, the film won’t be screened, as intended, in 35 mm CinemaScope: The print the Frist is showing is 16 mm. The difference isn’t just nitpicking. There’s a reason movies are shot to accommodate a particular screen size and shape, and the Frist wouldn’t dream of exhibiting a painting with its sides lopped off and the viewpoint readjusted. The absence of a 35 mm print is regrettable. Even so, this should still be better than watching the film on AMC, which not only shows it pan-and-scan but interrupts it with commercials. And the movie itself is a real discovery.

Other films in the series are also well worth seeing. Craig Brewer’s gritty 2000 chop-shop drama The Poor and Hungry (8 p.m. Saturday) remains one of the most assured independent features to come out of Tennessee, with its pungent and memorable use of Memphis locations and personalities. A Saturday afternoon double bill of films about the civil-rights struggle in Nashville boasts a rare showing of the 1964 BBC documentary Black Campus (4 p.m.), a time capsule of student life and politics at Fisk University. And several worthwhile shorts are part of the lineup, from Demetria Kalodimos’ Prophet Omega doc Friends Seen and Unseen (6 p.m. Saturday) to Paul Harrill’s Sundance prize-winner “Gina, An Actress, Age 29” (2 p.m. Sunday).

The suggested donation for each screening is $8. A full lineup and schedule can be found at www.fristcenter.org.

Holy landing

The Holy Land, the controversial Israeli film about a yeshiva student’s forbidden affair with a Russian prostitute, toplines the third annual Nashville Jewish Film Festival starting Nov. 15. The six-day festival, which grows in scope and quality each year, offers its widest variety of films yet. Selections include the Oscar-winning drama Nowhere in Africa, the documentaries The Nazi Officer’s Wife and My Terrorist, and local premieres of the features Yellow Asphalt and Gloomy Sunday.

The capper has to have the year’s best movie title: Kinky Friedman: Proud to Be an Asshole From El Paso. The documentary pays tribute to the Sold American’s wide-ranging career as a zonked country satirist and gonzo mystery writer. As a special event, the screening will feature appearances by the Kinkster’s infamous cohorts Little Jewford (one of the legendary Texas Jewboys) and Washington Ratso. For more information, call 298-5861 or 383-2105.

Open-mic night

A post-film Q&A with Steve Earle has been added to the Belcourt’s 7 p.m. Friday screening of Just an American Boy, Amos Poe’s documentary about the singer-songwriter’s noted activism against the death penalty and his past year of controversy. The film has its share of problems—see the review in our Movie Listings on p. 66—but Earle’s bashful nature isn’t one of them: The Q&A should be exciting. Tennessean critic Kevin Nance will moderate; the 9:30 p.m. screening of Demonlover has been cancelled.

—Jim Ridley