Fifteen years ago, Elia Kazan’s 1960 melodrama Wild River kicked off the Belcourt’s Visions of the South series, an expansive program that featured everything from rare films from Black filmmakers to freakin’ Deliverance. Montgomery Clift stars as a Tennessee Valley Authority supervisor who works to get a stubborn old matriarch (Jo Van Fleet) off her slowly flooding land, pissing off the ass-backwards residents in the process. He also has a very intense affair with the lady’s widowed granddaughter (Lee Remick). Kazan shot in locations throughout the state for this portrait of a true moment in time when change was coming — and a lot of people weren’t ready for that. Nearly everyone in this hothouse fire, from the racist townsfolk to Clift’s commitment-phobe protagonist, tries to stave off the future before inevitably having to — gasp! — get with the times. Belcourt education and engagement director Allison Inman (who also directed the documentary Mud on the Stars: Stories From Elia Kazan’s Wild River, which is showing alongside the Milestones of the Last Quarter Century series on June 6) will give an intro before each of the three screenings. Visit belcourt.org for showtimes.
May 30 & June 1 at the Belcourt
2102 Belcourt Ave.
