Considering the abundance of good story material for the screen contained in the social issues of the day, surprisingly few American films have tackled the public problems from which spring the personal dramas. Of the occasional ventures into this area Elia Kazan's have been among the best—for instance, On the Waterfront, Panic in the Streets and A Face in the Crowd, films which grew out of "documentary" materials and drew the private story from a wider social context. And now with Wild River Kazan explores a community issue and the private sorrows stemming from it….

In Kazan's film the subject [the Tennessee Valley Authority] gives rise to a moral issue that is the surest stuff of tragedy: two rights clashing head on make a wrong. Here is the archetypal conflict of the state versus the individual that we find in Antigone: community need (the irresistible force) against...