The Wind (1928)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Wind (1928) – V. Sjöström

Lillian Gish is a naïve Virginia girl who moves west to stay with her cousin’s family, no doubt dreaming of a better life – but instead she discovers howling winds and a jealous wife who is anxious to get rid of her as soon as she arrives.  A charming businessman seems the perfect suitor to take her away from this plight – but he turns out to be married and a creep on the make.  So, she ends up with a cowhand who she doesn’t love and becomes increasingly distraught, spending her days alone with that howling wind.  In fact, the wind is virtually another character in the plot, beating at the windows, blowing through the doors, making clothes and hats flap, and undoubtedly adding to the stress and tension of life and driving Gish out of her mind.  Director Victor Sjöström (who later played elderly Professor Isak Borg for Ingmar Bergman in Wild Strawberries) keeps the melodrama moving with a relative minimum of inter-titles, some spooky special effects (super-impositions of white horses representing the northerly winds) and excellent use of Gish and her expressive eyes for maximum impact.  Yet, yet, I enjoyed Sjöström’s earlier films, The Phantom Carriage (1921) and He Who Gets Slapped (1924), a bit more, despite the fact that, for many, The Wind is a masterpiece of silent cinema.  I wonder then whether the musical accompaniment I experienced (seemingly of Italian origin on my copy) showed the film in its best light; perhaps I should watch it again in a different version.