Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Wind Across the Everglades / USA / 1958

Another of Ray’s investigations of alternative lifestyles — here, bird-poachers vs. Audobon wardens in turn-of-the-century Florida — Wind Across the Everglades boasts some interesting eco-history and (from what I could discern from the eyeball-testing bootleg I rented) some nice nature photography. Most of the plot mechanics and performances here are awkward (and even, in the case of the peckerwood poachers, blandly stereotypical), but it is the rare film that features a young Christopher Plummer going head to head with Burl Ives in a moonshine-drinking contest.

by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Bootleg VHS
15 Feb 2006 1:48 PM | Comments (6)

Comments / 6 total / Submit Comment

1. Michael Matteson / 22 March 2006 / 5:09 AM

   I think the film is much better than it sounds here. The story is pretty interesting. It’s a deliberately hard film in terms of it’s hero (fairly messed up) and awareness that good things can be done for mixed reasons. Plummer’s character defends birds partly because he’s not very good with people. There’s an incredible use of actual folk music in the movie (Ray worked with Alan Lomax Jr at one time) and an almost cetainly genuine version of “Little Henry Lee” (from the Folkways Anthology). Paraphrasing Godard, fascist film telll you what to think (eg most “leftist” films), bourgeois film says just enjoy it (and it can be very good), and radical film asks/ presents problems and uncomfortable truths that require the audience to question and judge. This is a radical film.

2. leo / 22 March 2006 / 8:17 AM / URL

   Thanks, Michael — mine is a most cursory reading that should not be taken as a comprehensive review. The film is very interesting in the way that you mention, specifically insofar as it refuses to side comfortably with either Plummer or the poachers. This is not an unequivocally environmentalist film, though it tends in that direction. Like the film that followed it, The Savage Innocentsm>Wind presents two seemingly irreconcilable moral orders that nonetheless find some modest, temporary common ground. That Ray slightly favors one over the other in both films is understandable. And, for the most part, so are the racial/class caricatures that Ray makes of some of the characters, which are nonetheless mild for their time.

3. Troy / 24 March 2006 / 6:14 PM

   I would really like to obtain a copy of this movie’wind across the everglades’ with Christopher Plummer ,1958.Can you help me . Thank You.

4. leo / 25 March 2006 / 9:55 AM / URL

   The short answer is no. The copy I viewed here in the US was a bootleg VHS of very questionable provenance, obviously a third, fourth, or fifth generation copy, and damn near unwatchable. To my knowledge, the film has never been commercially available in this country.

   But as I have no idea where in the world you are, I can’t speak for your own situation. But if you are in the US, your best bet is to monitor TCM’s website for possible airings (Turner’s got one hell of an archive), or to inquire with some (tsk tsk) bootleg DVD outlets.

5. John Bruce / 13 April 2008 / 2:26 PM / URL

   Looking for a copy of this movie for our resorts movie library. Thanks in advance

6. David / 6 June 2008 / 2:32 PM

   I too have been looking for a copy of this movie. Has anyone any idea how to rent or obtain a copy? I live in Mexico.