Wind Across the Everglades (1958)

(On Cable TV, October 2022) I’m disappointed by Wind Across the Everglades, but it has a few elements worth mentioning. The biggest, as far as filmography-trackers are concerned, is that it’s a film attributed to Nicholas Ray, a director often seen as one of the greats of his time. Of course, it’s not quite so simple: A brief look at the film’s production history showcases a wild mixture of ego and mind-altering substances in a remote shooting location, perhaps explaining why the result doesn’t quite feel mastered when the putative director didn’t even complete shooting and wasn’t involved in the film’s editing. Wind Across the Everglades occasionally feels bigger than it is, with its copious on-location shooting, and a cast that goes from Burl Ives (great as a poacher) to Christopher Plummer (in one of his earliest roles as a naturalist) to noted burlesque dancer Gypsy Rose Lee and one of Peter Falk’s earliest screen appearances. Then there’s the main character: The Everglades themselves, captured in widescreen technicolour at a time when such portrayals were rare, with an ecological consciousness that seems out-of-place in a 1950s production. All of this makes Wind Across the Everglades interesting—but it doesn’t make it good. There’s quite a bit of missed potential here, but if the stories are to be believed, it’s a half-miracle that the film got completed at all.