Wind Across the Everglades

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Wind Across the Everglades Nicholas Ray; US 1958; Wild Side Video/ Region 2; 89 minutes; Aspect Ratio 1.33:1; Features: interviews with Bertrand Tavernier and Bernard Eisenschitz, illustrated booklet written by Patrick Brion

Film: Wind Across the Everglades was written and produced by Budd Schulberg, whose acclaimed screenplay for On the Waterfront (1954) was directed by Elia Kazan, a fellow collaborator in the Hollywood witch-hunt of the early 1950S. It was Kazan who proposed Nicholas Ray as director of Everglades, and indeed the subject-matter -- the isolated swamplands of Florida, with their singular inhabitants and their folklore -- would seem to be right up his alley, along with the awkward, complex power struggle between idealistic teacher Walt Murdock, representing the Audubon Society, and the monstrous Cottonmouth and his 'swamp-rats' who routinely massacre birds for their exotic, fashionable plumage.

However, as the copious extras accompanying this first DVD release explain, it was a far from happy shoot; Schulberg discovered that Ray, the victim of a disastrous amorous liaison, had developed an excessive fondness for alcohol and probably heroin. In fact, Ray was effectively fired before filming was concluded, with the final scenes between Cottonmouth and Murdock directed by Schulberg himself. As Ray himself later pointed out, this shifted the drama into a clumsy, melodramatic gear that he would have resisted.

That said, there is much to enjoy in the film, which until now has only really found favour in France. Ray's dramatising of individual scenes is full of inspired framings and shows a great sympathy for the locale, while the aura of authenticity is aided by the use of actors unfamiliar on the big screen. A notably restrained Christopher Plummer, playing Murdock in only his second big-screen role, was joined by Israeli former air hostess Chana Eden, the famous striptease artiste Gypsy Rose Lee, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a boxer, a jockey and a circus clown; under a beard, Peter Falk made his film debut (having been rejected by others because of his lazy eye).

The only 'name' performer was Burl Ives as the imposing Cottonmouth, splendidly ambiguous at least when under the direction of Ray. While the opening scenes of the film are clearly heavily compressed from a longer edit, and the conclusion disappointingly conventional, what lies between is dramatically cogent and in its central thrust more than justifies Bertrand Tavernier's suggestion that this is "the first ecological film".

Disc: A good transfer of the film, but the French subtitles can't be removed. The extras are also in French only. (DT)