A young bureaucrat for the Tennessee Valley Authority goes to rural Tennessee to oversee the building of a dam. He encounters opposition from the local people, in particular a farmer who objects to his employment (with pay) of local black laborers. Much of the plot revolves around the eviction of a stubborn octogenarian from her home on an island in the river, and the young man's love affair with that woman's widowed granddaughter.

• 20th Century Fox
• Montgomery Clift
• Lee Remick
• Jo Van Fleet
• Albert Salmi
• Jay C. Flippen
• James Westerfield
• Bruce Dern
• Barbara Loden