The Wind (1928)

A frail young woman from the east moves in with her cousin in the west, where she causes tension within the family and is slowly driven mad.

Director:

Victor Sjöström (as Victor Seastrom)

Writers:

Frances Marion (scenario), Dorothy Scarborough (from the novel by)

Stars:

Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson, Montagu Love

1 win.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Lillian Gish	...	Letty Mason
Lars Hanson	...	Lige
Montagu Love	...	Wirt Roddy
Dorothy Cumming	...	Cora
Edward Earle	...	Beverly
William Orlamond	...	Sourdough
Carmencita Johnson	...	Cora's Child
Leon Janney	...	Cora's Child (as Laon Ramon)
Billy Kent Schaefer	...	Cora's Child

Storyline

Innocent and naive Letty Mason moves from her Virginia home to Sweet Water on the western prairies to live on the ranch of her cousin Beverly, his wife Cora and their three children. Letty quickly learns how inhospitable the environment in Sweet Water is, the most obvious item being the incessant wind. But equally inhospitable are the unrefined way the people in Sweet Water live to which she is unaccustomed, and Cora, who believes Letty has come to steal Beverly away from her. As such, Cora orders Letty out of her and Bev's house. With no money, Letty is forced to accept one of the marriage proposal she receives, the lesser evil being that from Bev and Cora's ranching neighbor, Lige Hightower, a man who she does not love. Despite a less than harmonious start, Letty, in part due to her isolation as she is more often than not forced to stay inside due to the wind, begins to have affection for Lige, who wants to do right by her, and who promises to send her back to Virginia when he is ...

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Plot Keywords:

sand | buried in sand | paranoia | female protagonist | cousin cousin relationship | 

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Genres:

Drama | Romance | Western

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

23 November 1928 (USA)

Also Known As:

Stormen

Filming Locations:

Bakersfield, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

79 min (TCM print)

Sound Mix:

Silent

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

While Lillian Gish claimed that a tragic ending was filmed and a happy ending was substituted at the insistence of MGM executives, the original shooting scripts reveal that the happy ending was intended from the beginning.

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Connections

Featured in 100 Years at the Movies (1994)

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Soundtracks

A Cowboy's Lament
Played at the Shindig

User Reviews

A Masterpiece by Any Standard.

I've watched The Wind several times, and I am convinced that it is one of the greatest movies ever. It is certainly the best silent western, and Lillian Gish has never been so profound as she is here.

What lifts it to the rank of a masterpiece is the passion of the direction and camera-work, and it certainly shows the advantage in having a mature artist like director Victor Sjöström. The central character is, as promised, the wind, and the raw power of nature supersedes the melodrama. You become engulfed in the tempests and hurricanes, and it is only to easy to understand that they might drive the young lady mad.

Lillian Gish also does a magnificent job; her usual overacting is actually appropriate for this role, as the powerful cinematic images have established the likeliness that she is falling to pieces. This surely has to be her greatest performance. Dorothy Cumming is also equally powerful as the embittered "other woman", one of the most evil characters to be found in a western. The other actors are adequate and satisfying without rising to the level of genius. Their acting is natural and unforced, unlike most silents.

It definitely gains from being a silent movie, all that dialogue would become a distraction if we had to listen to it. It helps that Thames Silents Orchestra has composed a beautiful and moving soundtrack, one that would sound good on a CD recording.

If you have any appreciation for silent film, rush out and get this one today!

PS Everyone seems to hate the studio-imposed ending, including Gish herself. Well, they are wrong! The Wind was going to end with Gish escaping the bad guy's advances by fleeing into a sandstorm and perishing...typical Victorian tragic melodrama, the sort of thing spoofed by Chaplin and other comedians.

What we get instead is considerably more complex and interesting, and contains some of the best scenes in the movie. I won't give the credit to the studio execs who demanded the revised ending; obviously, Sjöström was a genius who knew how to work wonders with whatever material he was given.