The Wind (1928)

A Haunting Wind

"Wind's a funny thing. A man's killed in justice, it covers him up." -- Lige to Letty

It was Lillian Gish who chose Dorothy Scarborough's moody book as her next film at MGM, writing a four page outline she placed in the hands of Frances Marion. An overworked Irving Thalberg let her pick her own projects and the end result was one of the last great films of the silent era.

Gish came to Bakersfield to film it, choosing the Mojave desert finally for this film about the elements having a life all their own. She also chose Lars Hanson from Sweden to star opposite her in a film many consider to be Victor Seastrom's finest. Eight airplanes were used to create the flurry of sand so constant it could drive men and women to madness. John Arnold's photography wonderfully captures Gish's innocence and then wild-eyed terror at the haunting and always blowing wind.

Virginia girl Letty Mason (Lillian Gish) is traveling by train to stay with her beloved cousin, Beverly (Edward Earle). The worldly Wirt Roddy (Montagu Love) is taken with her baby-faced beauty but they part ways at the station when Lige Hightower (Lars Hanson) and his sidekick Sourdough (William Orlamond) are sent by Beverly to pick her up. The two less worldly men are also enamored of Letty.

Her unusually close relationship with Beverly creates sparks with his loving wife Cora (Dorothy Cumming), who finally puts her foot down. Scoffing at proposals from Lige and Sourdough, she puts her hope in Wirt who, it turns out, is already married. She returns, but unable to go back, marries Lige, who really does love her. He soon discovers, however, that she does not return his feelings, and the two brace the elements until he can afford to send her back home.

It is the Indian's belief that the North Wind is a ghost horse that haunts the film. Nightmarish images of the white horse are imposed against the unrelenting sand beating against the windowpanes. At one point, everyone must race to the storm cellar when a cyclone of dirt rises from the earth to tear across it in a frenzy of dust. Letty's fear of it is palpable.

Attempting to round up wild horses during a dust storm to make the needed money to get Letty away from the dirt and safely home, Lige will return to discover a different girl than the one he left behind. Wirt has taken advantage of the situation but Letty has defended herself the only way she could. It is the wind which has it's final say, but it is a friendly one this time, and a happy ending for a couple now both in love, and no longer afraid.

The happier ending demanded by the studio works in the film's favor. The viewer does not wish to see the elements overcome and cover Letty in a dark cloud of dust. It is a wonderful ending of living side by side with the sometimes harsh personality of nature, which can also be a friend. The final shot of Lige and Letty in a windy doorway is unforgettable. A must for silent film fans and a nostalgic footnote in Bakersfield history. August 11, 2008

Silent film reaches the peak of its art form at the dawn of sound

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 spectre 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 filmmaking 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 dialogue became important. The first problem - technical - was remedied much more quickly than the second problem, which was largely a matter of psychology and experience.

It's a shame such a masterpiece is not out on DVD. I believe that Warner Home Video retains the rights to this film as they do to a host of other silent masterpieces. I hope that they use their rights in a timely fashion and give us a DVD release of this film worthy of the wait we silent film buffs have endured. October 8, 2007

The Wind Beneath My Wings

Lillian Gish evening last night when we had Hambone and Hillie on the one hand (late period Gish where she was brought in like an old mailbox, kept on the corner for a scene or two, then hauled away back to her town house) and THE WIND on the other. Of the two we preferred the later film. I used to love Lillian Gish and believed in her and I believed in the sanctity of silent film and all those wonderful sentiments Kevin Brownlow and Louise Brooks wrote about. But not any more. It took me a few reels of old style Lillian Gish to get over it. Everyone knows the story from the title alone, but what you may not understand is that Gish starts to go crazy the minute a breeze hits her face, and it doesn't get better.

SPOILERS. Finally she gets someone who says he will take her away to a place, a quiet place, where the wind doesn't blow. Should have been the looney bin if you ask me. But in a way, she is still a remarkable actress even under the outdated conditions of film acting that seem so ludicrous to us today. (However, why is it that properly viewed in the proper number of frames per second, etc., most silent acting holds up today, Pickford, Swanson, Novarro, Fairbanks, Bow, etc., all remarkably naturalistic and real--and then there's Gish, acting acting ACTING with every quivering pore of her body--on a shelf all her own--the shelf of madness). I liked the way instead of becoming more fluttery as she does in Duel in the Sun, her Letty in THE WIND straightens her shoulders more and more, the way Bette Davis sort of acted with shoulders, so that by the time she's really mad she resembles one of the old straightback chairs in my grandmother's parlor.

Her acting choices, while counterintuitive and madly different, are sometimes just meh. People say she was thrownout of MGM after just five pictures in a row, all flops, but they're not taking into account that audiences just didn't want to see her any more. They had had enough and they wanted her back on the New York stage or playing Ophelia in the real, Danish castle of Elsinore, and then later on in life they enjoyed seeing her in SNOOP SISTERS type vehicles. There was always Dorothy Gish for people to warm up to, while Lillian stood to one side, aloof and cold, and perhaps a little disapproving of Dorothy's mad, drunken passion for Louis Calhern, but never showing it--so she was capable of the kind of restraint Victor Seastrom insisted she check at the old corral during the filming of THE WIND. Much has been made of the tragic ending the suits at MGM deleted, but I'll tell you, if it ever comes to light, and the ominous delay in the DVD release of THE WIND might be a sign that it's in the wind (as it were), I will personally destroy every copy of the directors cut they issue, if it's the last thing I do. September 4, 2007

One of the creepiest and best silent films around

Lillian Gish was quite the actress; in this film she pulls out all the stops, as she slowly goes crazy out in the plains (unnamed, but creepy all the more); a very slow-moving film, but one that gets under your skin, just as it does to Ms. Gish's character.

The climax is truly a tour de force for Seastrom, the director, and Gish. The implacable and relentless wind is more than a metaphor, it is one of the main characters, and overcomes everything--except love. It stands up very well to the 21st century.

The score by Carl Davis is first rate, and really makes this film be even better. Don't miss it. July 11, 2007

Be Swept Along

Other reviewers have more expertise concerning silent cinema, and state succinctly the background of this film. So I shall add only one small opinion to the others. Simply this: Lettie wandering off into the desert would have been the better conclusion. The author of the original book understood this, and wrote it into his novel. Here's a poor dear that's had so much on her plate: loveless marriage, murder, distate from relatives, horrible weather, jealousy, culture shock, &tc. Such high drama would dent most anyone's armour. The sweet tied-up ending might have allowed audiences to leave the theaters relieved and all in smiles, but it doesn't fit. This is melodrama! Pull out all the stops and do it correctly. Be that as it may, Miss Gish is outstanding in her role, a consummate tragedienne, as mentioned by another reviewer. And so beautiful to look at, pure pleasure to watch on the screen. Wrong-ended and all, this film belongs in your collection if you have any interest in silents whatsoever. June 25, 2004

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