The Place Beyond the Winds

The third and final of the remnants of early features with Lon Chaney on the BEFORE THE THOUSAND FACES DVD, this is the best preserved of the three (only the first of five reels is missing) and the least satisfying. The synopsis offered on the IMDb is several hundred words in length; despite having read it three times, I can make neither heads nor tails of it. Neither does looking at it make things much better, since people seem to do things, often as not, to advance the plot speedily, rather than as expressions of their characters, Thus, two characters may move to the same place and work in the same hospital for a long time without ever recognizing each other, when one of them has nothing to do in the story.

This movie uses much the same cast and crew as the others on the disc. Dorothy Phillips is the star, and if there is an artistic point to the movie, it is to show the evolution of her character from a free spirit as an adolescent girl to a mature young woman, "older but wiser" who, despite her hero's journey, can go home again. Lon Chaney, the reason for Jon Mirsalis going to all the trouble he did in working with the Library of Congress and providing a pleasing score, offers a performance of a half-breed who lusts for Miss Phillips, but he does not rape her; no indeed, he locks her overnight in a cabin, so her father insists that she marry him, since she has obviously besmirched the family honor. She will have none of this however. And so forth.

As I said, it's all people acting in a way that indicates to me that once upon a time they may have had reasons, but now they simply have the demands of the plot. At that point, I lose interest.