Jornada Tétrica

And in Nicholas Ray's canon,it's not the only one.Few directors (if there were any) displayed ecological concern fifty years ago.Maybe John Huston did when he filmed the plight of the elephants in "roots of Heaven" at the time.But it was not as successful as "wind across the everglades.

They say Ray did not finish the film (once again it was not the only one;see also "55 days at Peking" )but ,apart from his plea for the everglades wildlife,we find one of his permanent features:the Walt/Cottonmouth relationship is very complex and verges on a father and son one (for that matter ,see also " knock on any door" "the lusty men" " run for cover" ..) The picture with these birds flying away is sublime.

Burl Ives and his band of lowlife bird poachers are the equivalent of the "rednecks" in "Deliverance". Christopher Plummer on the other hand is their Audobon Society adversary, trying to protect the tropical birds and their valuable feathers. When the movie is in the Everglades, it moves along at a pretty good pace, while the Miami scenes feel padded. I'd imagine there has to be at least a bunch of fashionable ladies parading around in their feathered hats to make a point, but the scene on the beach and Gypsy Rose Lee's ladies of the evening are somewhat overplayed. The film is strongest when Ives and Plummer are on screen, almost everyone else is forgettable. I would rate this only slightly above average, but definitely watchable. - MERK

I love this movie and the important message to brings!

I remember seeing this film in 1961 at a local drive in theater.As a native Floridian I enjoyed it very much,especially since it was filmed nearby in Naples, Florida.To me it was an accurate depiction of how life was back then. Poaching was common,wildlife officers and environmentalists were fighting a losing battle against it. It showed Florida as it was at the turn of the century,when it was young and wild. This movie is truly a treasure of history in this area. I have been hoping it would be re-released for many years but to no avail. It is a shame that it cannot be viewed by our children.I would greatly appreciate owning a copy of this great film. Skip Kent,Bonita Springs, Fl.

And so the environmentalist shall lie down with the swamp rat under the shelter of Protest. Such, at least, is my takeaway from the best scene in this flawed but interesting 1958 Nicholas Ray film where the Man From The Audubon Society and the King Of The Crackers are drunkenly united in their dislike of modern, urban civilization and, in so doing, anticipate the 1960s counter culture by at least eight years.

It's fashionable in film circles to disparage this Ray work and cast as the villain producer/writer Budd Schulberg who fired his Genius Director toward the end of shooting and took his place behind the camera. I somewhat subscribe to this view although with the fairly large caveat that The Genius was injesting heroin at the time, a rather significant detail the auteurists tend to omit. Whoever is to blame, there is no getting around the fact that large swaths of the film involving the early settlement of Miami and the love affair between Christopher Plummer and Chana Eden are as dull as a Marlins double header and that Burl Ives' performance is over the top pretty much throughout rather than in just certain parts of the film that Schulberg may have helmed. So let's give it a generous B minus for the Great Protest as well as other good red neck stuff like the elemental fight for sleeping quarters and the Everglades floozies who Ives so admires.

PS...I notice that Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter, who did the music, did not get a credit. Anti Schulberg Protest?

PSS...An early Peter Falk performance does not make a strong impression. Gypsy Rose Lee, however, does, especially from the neck down.