The Wind (1928)

Directed by Victor Sjöström

Starring Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson and Montagu Love 

Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer (MGM)

In a barren desert landscape, a train navigates the rocky terrain, buffeted on all sides by wind and sand.

Within a passenger car sits Letty, a single woman on her way from Virginia to stay with her cousin Beverly and his family on a hard-scrabble plot of land in Texas. A cattle rancher takes an interest in Letty and there are some sparks before the wind intrudes, blowing through an open window in the car.

Once at the station, Letty disembarks and is escorted to her cousin's house by the rancher Wirt Roddy and two cowboys, Lige and Sourdough (because really what else would you name cowboys?).  Her cousin is thrilled to see her and his kids take an immediate liking to her as well.  Beverly's wife?  She sees Letty as a threat and starts pushing her rival out.

After demurring at first, Letty accepts Roddy's proposal to take her away from this wind-beaten patch of wasteland and moves out of her cousin's house. Of course Roddy decides that is the moment to reveal he already has a wife. Without a home or any prospects, Letty must marry either Lige or Sourdough. She goes the younger route and she and Lige get hitched.

Lige quickly realizes Letty does not love him and promises to save money to send her away. Complicating this plan is the unrelenting wind and desert which are killing off the cattle. Can Lige take Letty away from this spirit-crushing existence?  Or will Letty finally learn to live with her lot in life?



 I have admired a number of melodramas during my marathon. If there is a thread that connects those I have enjoyed, I'd say it's that as overwrought as the emotions became, the characters were consistent and their actions came from a place I could understand (if not agree with).

I don't get any of the people that populate The Wind.

The film is a series of characters making bad decisions. I started out wondering why the hell Letty would want to move to this barren landscape. By the end, I couldn't figure out why anyone lived there.

Letty moves in with her cousin and his family. Beverly's wife clearly doesn't want the outsider there. And not in a passive-aggressive dropping the occasional hint way. More of the in-your-face, "get out of my house now!" way.  You'd think maybe that issue would have come up before Letty got on the train.

So Letty marries Lige and she seems shocked when her new husband expects her to love him. Shocked that the husband expected his wife not to be repulsed by a simple kiss.

Later, Lige heads out to the range to survey the dead cattle with some other ranchers. First off, the cattle are dead because the ranchers are trying to graze them in the middle of the $&%#*@$ desert. Second, Letty insists that she cannot stay alone at home with the wind so she rides off into the middle of this constant sandstorm with Lige. And she gets thrown from her horse. And then she rides with Lige on his horse and that horse throws her. So she has to go back home anyway.

None of this would be terrible if the characters' motivations didn't seem so arbitrary scene-to-scene.  The film careens from one moment to the next with each of the players suffering from an amnesia that makes them forget everything they previously said or did.

The completely asinine story gets better acting than it deserves from the two leads. Lillian Gish is reliably great here as the woman being driven mad by gusts of wind. And Lars Hanson manages the trick of taking Lige, a character that begins as simple comic relief, and turning him into a fully formed, sympathetic human being.

There are some fantastic choices made by director Victor Sjöström. He builds the tension after an argument between the newlywed couple by focusing the camera on the husband's and wife's feet as they pace back and forth across the cabin, until Lige decides to break the stalemate.  We then follow his shoes until they reach Letty. The film's conclusion ratchets up the suspense and features a haunting shot of a dead body being buried by the wind blown sands.

While there are some positives here, it's not enough to save The Wind. The fundamental setup is so flawed and the script has the characters make increasingly stupid decisions.

** out of *****

NOTE: The titular weather from The Wind was produced using eight airplane engines.