The River (1984 film)
| The River | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Mark Rydell |
| Produced by | Robert Cortes Edward Lewis |
| Written by |
Robert Dillon Julian Barry |
| Starring | |
| Music by | John Williams |
| Cinematography | Vilmos Zsigmond |
| Edited by | Sidney Levin |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
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Release date
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December 19, 1984 |
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Running time
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122 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $18 million |
| Box office | $11.5 million |
The River is a 1984 American drama film directed by Mark Rydell which tells the story of a struggling farm family in the Tennessee valley trying to keep its farm from going under in the face of bank foreclosures, floods, and other hard times. The father faces the dilemma of having to work as a strikebreaker in a steel mill to keep his family farm from foreclosure. The film was based on the true story of farmers who unknowingly took the jobs as strikebreakers at a steel mill after their crops had been destroyed by rain. It stars Mel Gibson, Sissy Spacek, Scott Glenn and Billy Green Bush.
The film was written by Robert Dillon and Julian Barry. It was directed by Mark Rydell.
Director Mark Rydell viewed the characters in this drama as iconically American, and he was eager to cast Sissy Spacek as the farm wife because of her performance in Coal Miner's Daughter and her home on a farm in near Charlottesville, Virginia. Rydell said, "She is the consummate American rural young woman, with strength and fiber and a luminous quality." Mel Gibson begged Rydell to let him play the Tennessee farmer who reminded him of his father, but the director was reluctant because of Gibson’s Australian accent. Before Gibson left for England to film The Bounty, he begged Rydell not to cast the part yet. Rydell recalled, "He came back to my house in Los Angeles and started reading the script, talking, reading the newspaper, in this perfect Tennessee accent. I was really impressed, even when he stood next to Sissy, who's like a tuning fork when it comes to accents, he had damn well done it."
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