The Wind

Released Nov 23, 1928

1h 28m

Drama

List

100%

10 Reviews

Tomatometer

89%

500+ Ratings

Audience Score

When Letty Mason (Lillian Gish), an emotionally fragile woman from Virginia, relocates to West Texas, she finds herself unsettled by the ever-present wind and sand. Arriving at her new home at the ranch of her cousin (Edward Earle), she receives a surprisingly cold welcome from his wife (Dorothy Cumming). Soon tensions in the family and unwanted attention from a trio of suitors, including neighbor Lige Hightower (Lars Hanson), leave Letty increasingly disturbed, resulting in tragedy.

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Audience Member

As far as cinematography and acting, this is one of the best silent films you can watch today. The scenes of the windswept plain and the lovingly filmed segments featuring Lillian Gish make this a great work of art. For a silent, the acting is reasonably subdued and convincing. Unfortunately the film does not quite earn a 10 because it has a few small flaws. The ending doesn't work out perfectly. While her killing the evil rapist and burying him as well as her mind playing tricks on her afterwards, I couldn't believe the very end where she pledges her undying love to a man she barely knows and who she was so ambivalent towards.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

02/08/23

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Audience Member

This masterpiece from director Victor Sjöström is a poem of light and sweeping beauty. Lillian Gish never acted better and the story is heartbreakingly poignant.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

01/18/23

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Audience Member

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.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/04/23

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andrey k

Impressive movie. It's a pity that such an absurd and preposterous ending was forced by the studio, an unhappy ending would have been a cherry on the top. But still this motion picture is a tremendous achievement for the brilliant Swedish director Victor Sjostrom with his characteristic 'brooding' cinema. The atmosphere is a perfect companion piece for Lilian Gish's genius performance; the movie itself could, probably, be called one of the first about a house lost in the wilderness, be it woods or desert. It's nightmarish scenes even reminded me 'The Evil Dead' and the story of a woman going mad echoes with Polanski's superb 'Repulsion'. All in all it is a great movie, a true gem of silent cinema.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

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Audience Member

The Wind is a captivating film centred around the Lillian Gush as the protagonist. The male characters around her shift roles as the film evolves. Based in 19th century Texas, the story portrays a young Virginian woman set to build a new life against her will and is forced to choose a man to survive. This has been a realistic circumstance for the history of civilization up to and excepting the modern era. The film has some very interesting cinematography and is well acted, with an interesting plot based on the book of the same name.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/15/23

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Audience Member

One of the greatest silent movies ever made. Swedish director Victor SjÃ¶strom takes the fairly simple storyline of a young au pair caught between the attentions of a dashing young horse-wrangler, his toothless old friend and the brutal womanising father of the children she has been employed to nanny, and allows all the emotion, drama and comedy room to breathe. The backdrop of the relentless dry sandstorms mirrors precisely the desperation of the central characters. Lillian Gish is sensational, and Carl Davis' score for the Thames Silents version is stupendous.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

01/27/23

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Victor Sjöström

Director

Lillian Gish

Letty

Lars Hanson

Lige

Montagu Love

Roddy

Dorothy Cumming

Cora

Edward Earle

Beverly

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Alan Scherstuhl

Village Voice

For all the twisters and panicking crowds, this is a face-and-character piece built around Gish's most subtly pained performance and well-observed bursts of naturalistic life ...

Feb 3, 2015

Full Review

Zita Short

InSession Film

The Wind is a fascinating blend between an old-fashioned woman’s picture, a film noir and a western. Lillian Gish holds it all together with her canny, daring performance and Victor Sjöstrom’s direction allows the story to move beyond mere allegory.

Feb 2, 2023

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Nathanael Hood

Unseen Films

[Sjöström] transformed the desolate wilderness of the Mojave Desert into a screenscape as eerie and otherworldly as anything by Murnau or Wiene.

Rated: 8/10

May 9, 2020

Full Review

Tim Dirks

Filmsite

The Wind (1928) is one of Lillian Gish's greatest achievements in a powerfully dramatic silent film - her fourth and last MGM film and the last of her silent films. She had previously collaborated with Swedish director Victor Sjostrom...

Rated: A+

Oct 19, 2019

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Isabel Quigly

The Spectator

A fine example of the creation of dramatic mood and atmosphere in terms of visuals, and without benefit of sound track.

Jul 19, 2018

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Dennis Schwartz

Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews

It's one of the few silents to stand the test of time.

Rated: A

Sep 16, 2011

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Synopsis

When Letty Mason (Lillian Gish), an emotionally fragile woman from Virginia, relocates to West Texas, she finds herself unsettled by the ever-present wind and sand. Arriving at her new home at the ranch of her cousin (Edward Earle), she receives a surprisingly cold welcome from his wife (Dorothy Cumming). Soon tensions in the family and unwanted attention from a trio of suitors, including neighbor Lige Hightower (Lars Hanson), leave Letty increasingly disturbed, resulting in tragedy.

Director: Victor Sjöström
Screenwriter: Dorothy Scarborough, Frances Marion
Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Production Co: Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Genre: Drama
Release Date (Theaters): Nov 23, 1928, Original
Runtime: 1h 28m