River Of No Return

Year Published: 1943

Creator: Frederic and Sylvia Christian

Format: 16mm

Color: Color

Sound: sound

Description: ‘River of No Return’ has no sound track, music, or narration. The filmmakers, Frederic and Sylvia Christian, are virtual unknowns, a husband and wife team from Spokane who filmed their personal journey down Idaho’s Salmon River in their remarkable two-rudder flat-bottomed boat, “Christian’s Challenger,” which we see them building beside the river at 11:55 into the film. They made the film to accompany their public lectures documenting the four-crew journey down the challenging Salmon River. Initially, the film appears to be little more than a home movie filmed by better-than-average photographers, using fairly decent equipment. Along the way, however, the film becomes magical. The scenery and wildlife are magnificent, the vignettes along the wayside, including bear, beaver, moose, owl, bighorn sheep, lo-motioned rodeos, horse riders venturing down canyon trails, and a gravity shower outside a loghouse farm (at 30:09), are wonderful. The film ends somewhat abruptly when the Salmon River, after 400 miles, confluences with the Snake, and then eventually mixing with the Columbia at Pasco, Washington. The river eventually flows to the churning Pacific Ocean. Among the highlights are a hand-pulled tram car spanning the river at 15:56, petroglyphs at 20:16, and making a rudder repair at 27:17. At the end of the film, they unload their intrepid craft and release it alone into the river to seek its final and unmanned fate. Who were  Frederic and Sylvia? Here’s the little we do know. After Frederic Christian died, and Sylvia married filmmaker Paul Hoefler. When first Hoefler, and the she passed away, what was left of Hoefler’s films --- and her films as well --- were sold at auction and ended up on a couple of pallets at the warehouse of a weapons and ammunition dealer. What remains is a beautiful and timeless film. It’s haunting as well, as we witness these two very alive people from the past, living to the utmost in an unintended deaf-like silence. - Geoff Alexander