The Wind

Lillian Gish plays her usual virginal character thrown into adverse and unjust circumstances, but here she does so much with the part as we watch her slowly unravel and lose her mind. She plays Letty, a girl from Virginia who comes to live with relatives in a dust bowl town. The atmosphere into which she travels doesn't make sense in many ways. The people there supposedly make their living from cattle ranching, but with the constant sandstorms I don't see how anything is supposed to survive in such an environment. However, that is not really the point. The constant wind and storms are just metaphors for Letty's own mental state and feeling of entrapment. Her cousin's wife is hostile to her from the start, convinced that Letty wants to take her husband away from her, and eventually forces her out of the home. As a result she marries a man she doesn't love, and once this is clear to him he accepts the situation and makes it a goal to raise enough money to send Letty back to Virginia where she will be happy. On top of this there is the constant specter of a wealthy married man who wants to take Letty's virtue for the recreation of it all.

The visual work on this film is spectacular, much like Murnau's "Sunrise" except in reverse - this film starts out on an upbeat note with Letty looking forward to the new direction her life has turned, and it being all downhill from there. Thus we come to the familiar topic of the abrupt upbeat ending and how it didn't make any sense in the context of the rest of the film. It was an early example of studio suits interfering with the artistic vision of the filmmakers, and so upset director Victor Sjostrom that he never directed another film in America.

Like Murnau's "Sunrise" and "The Crowd", 1928's "The Wind" is an example of silent film-making at its peak. This level of art in movies would be lost at the dawn of sound until the problems with the static camera could be overcome and the novelty of sound wore off to the extent that plot and meaningful dialog became important. The first problem - technical - was remedied much more quickly than the second problem, which was largely a matter of psychology and experience.

Highly recommended for silent film fans.

This is quite simply one of the handful of greatest achievements in the history of visual storytelling. There are images as fresh, as inventive as any you will ever see. You may find some of Gish's emoting a little over the top, but immediately there follow moments when she is as subtle and complex as anyone who came after her. She did, after all, invent screen acting as we now know it. One may wish for the original ending Gish and Sjostrom wanted; but the final images as re-shot were still created by artists at the height of their respective powers, and are memorable in their own right. The desert wind lives and howls in this film, as it has done only rarely in films by John Ford and David Lean. Anyone who doubts that cinema is art has never seen The Wind.

The outstanding atmosphere makes this classic melodrama especially memorable. The story and the acting would have made a pretty good movie by themselves, but it is "The Wind" itself that makes it something more. Not only is the constant presence of the wind a well-conceived figurative parallel to the events in the characters' lives, but making it work on the screen was also a remarkable technical achievement for its era.

Lillian Gish is deservedly praised for her role as Letty, a young woman from the east who travels to a strange and unforgiving region. This is the kind of role that Gish always seemed born to play. But Lars Hanson also does an excellent job in an even more difficult role. In order for the story to work, Hanson has to make his character fully sympathetic to the audience, while at the same time making it plausible that Gish's character does not care for him very much.

It's still very impressive the way that the powerful prairie winds are made such an indispensable part of the movie. It must have involved a great deal of work and sacrifice to achieve such realism without fancy technology. And it is masterful the way that the howling, never-ceasing winds are used to parallel the conflicts among the characters. This is one of the fine classics of the silent era that should not be missed.

Lillian Gish's legendary career was nearly as lengthy as her life. Time and time again, she has shown audiences that she was truly one of the finest actresses who ever lived. A perfect example of her power and artistry is in "The Wind".

Miss Gish plays "Letty", a young girl from Virginia who moves to her cousin's house on the wild, open plains of Texas. The plot is very interesting and very fluid. Miss Gish is wonderful as usual (the sequence of events at the end of the movie is among the finest performances on film) but the real star of the movie is Swedish heartthrob Lars Hanson. A real delightful performance, with real charisma.

A must-see film that deserves more recognition.

Peculiar, but brilliantly filmed silent classic starring Gish as a young woman who battles for her life as she lives in the windy Texas desert, and is torn between two men who want her. Special effects are quite breathtaking for its time and since it was filmed in the scorching Mojave Desert in California.