Director Elia Kazan’s s lyrical 1962 evocation of the turbulent 30s has a New Dealer parachute into rural Tennessee to evict a stubborn octogenarian and her widowed granddaughter before a TVA dam floods their land. Basically, a fairy tale in which DC prince rescues backwoods Rapunzel from a reactionary old witch, Wild River complicated both by Kazans political ambivalence and his casting. Montgomery Clift is the sleeping beauty whose diffidence is (perhaps) thawed by Lee Remicks sexual warmth. (NR) J. HOBERMAN
April 23-29, 7 & 9 p.m., 2010
