Rivers have starred in a lot of movies! When I asked Ruth if she had an idea for a blog about rivers, she suggested that movies containing them would make a good theme. I decided to name my 10 favorites, which gave me a chance to play movie critic.
A River Runs Through It is very pretty to watch but overlong if you’re bored by fly fishing or looking at rivers. It has an excellent cast giving good performances and a fine music score by one of my favorites, Mark Isham. His scores for Never Cry Wolf and The Moderns are among his most exceptional.
2. Deliverance is a film that actually stars a river. However, its film score is what people most remember from it. “Dueling Banjos” became a national hit. It was based on a best-selling novel by poet James Dickey, who also did the screenplay.
3. The African Queen earned a well-deserved Academy Award for Best Actor for veteran Humphrey Bogart. It’s a true cinema classic that is absorbing story-telling throughout. Katherine Hepburn was nominated for Best Actress but did not win, a rare occurrence for a woman with a record 12 nominations.
4. Aguirre, the Wrath of God, an epic 1972 German film, is a movie that truly stars a river, The Amazon. In it Aguirre, performed by German actor Klaus Kinski, descends into madness while floating down The Amazon’s upper reaches in search of El Dorado.
5. River of No Return is an old and great action film starring Marilyn Monroe at her best and the Salmon River in Idaho. Tough guy Robert Mitchum co-starred. Some scenes were filmed on the Bow River in Banff National Park.
6-10 will be featured tomorrow.
Hank
