Watch The Wind For Free

That was an excellent one.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Good movie but grossly overrated

Fresh and Exciting

"The Wind" is acknowledged to be a silent classic and gets nothing but excellent ratings by IMDb reviewers. Lillian Gish was a film pioneer and Victor Sjostrom is a giant in Swedish cinema. But accomplishment, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, and I have to say I didn't care for "The Wind". Apart from the fact that there are a great many holes in the plot, I thought Ms. Gish's performance is overrated and I didn't appreciate her pop-eyed, overwrought portrayal of Letty, who arrives in the middle of nowhere flat broke. I thought the final sequences in the cabin with the wind howling were overdone, but I thought the best part of the picture was the sensitive portrayal by Lars Hanson of the farmhand she 'marries' but lives a platonic relationship in his own house. The plot didn't work for me and I felt it was simplistic and far-fetched. And, I know, don't tell me - It's a Silent Classic.

Strange as it may seem, I think this film is better because it is silent. We can easily fit in the sound effects in our minds. Mr. Sjostrom made absolutely sure of that. And Sjostrom worked in the outdoors so often. "The Outlaw and His Wife" pops into mind. The plot, as desperate as it is, could hold up to any amount of over-acting and the lack of explicit sound simply draws us farther and farther into the film. I guess I wouldn't mind an independent score but I've seen the film both in Paris at the Cinematheque and here in the States a few years back and I didn't miss a thing - I think. Highly recommended! Curtis Stotlar

A very sweet Ms. Lillian Gish explains in her introduction of the film for TCM that, then at the apex of her Hollywood career at MGM, she picked the project because it was all about motion. It was an astute choice at the time, even though by hindsight it is only a modest film in a field then predominantly controlled by the Europeans in Moscow, Berlin, and Paris, the landscape revealing soul.So vast dustblown prairies as the interior image of unconscious soul hardened by thankless life, which now and then ravage inscrutable winds from above. Winds that force the woman to barricade inside the mind where paranoid visions get out to haunt. Sjostrom equates her with the lone light in the middle of a dark, windblown cabin, trembling, swinging from side to side; in doing so casting shadows around her.It is a poignant metaphor all else aside, which, if it doesn't elevate those aspects of an otherwise ordinary melodrama that have to do with the mind - okay a woman if you insist on gender readings, but I'm not keen on them - hopelessly trying to assert a grasp over a complex network of forces that controls life, it at least diverts attention from the more tawdry elements. We'll just have to concentrate where it matters.A bit of this we'll have to reclaim now that we know better; our film seems to insist that the landscape would conceal the vengeance of a wronged woman, recognizing right in wrong. The moral lesson meant to transfer providential qualities to abstract nature forgets its own crucial detail; the man can't see the body because he doesn't know where to look, but the woman does. Her gaze unearths the guilt.It is the male gaze that has set everything in motion though, the desiring, prying gaze, as though by staring they upset the currents of the soul. In the end the distraught woman fantasizes a white horse in the sky, which according to Indian lore unleashes the winds by stomping through the heavens, this deeply male symbol of virility and strength threatening to engulf her.The tacky, studio-imposed ending we'll have to ignore altogether, Ms. Gish says that the original ending was bleak with the woman loosing herself out in the dust. A fitting vision that we can superimpose over the syrupy deceit.Even so, or in spite of that, it is a modest film. Watch Lev Kuleshov's By the Law from 1926 for a more lucid abstraction of the same idea. The atmosphere is more than potent though.

I heard Lillian Gish's promo before the film showed on TCM, and I was intrigued to watch a film that so many promoters/distributors did not want to show, even with altered endings.I've watched many silent era films, including those by Hitchcock, Murnau, Wiene, West and more, and I have to say that The Wind is my second favorite, a close second to Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari being my hands down favorite. It was refreshing to see a silent film without scene after scene of conversation narrowed down to one title card, over the top performances, odd camera direction and uncomfortable shots.This film is a great example of a controlled film during the silent era. Gish was spot on, allowing Letty's insanity build but not in a grotesquely overacted way. Right before the end, when her insanity climaxes, she just touches being over the top but never flies on over. A place that Gish could have flown (or been blown) over the top but didn't is the Norther Madness scene with Letty and Roddy. I love how Letty looks surprised at how something as small and quick as a gunshot could do so much damage, after fighting off the giant overwhelming sandstorms for weeks. The subtlety in that shot, the way it was played, the steadiness of the camera, the wide shot conveying the vulnerability of that one small woman against a world of sandstorms and hostility, was captured beautifully in that very short but perfect shot.I was very glad that Cora, played by Dorothy Cumming, was reeled in a bit and not allowed to appear possessed as the 'bad' women in silent films often did. Montagu Love as Roddy was dripping with disgust but not to the point of unbelievable. Lige, played by Lars Hanson, was a little stiff but not to the point of making the film uncomfortable. The rest of the supporting cast were good and gave the film a depth that was not overshadowing to the story but added just the right amount.The jump cut when Letty is on the train in normal clothing to Letty suddenly being dressed in hat and coat was a bit jarring, but the rest of the film was edited and shot brilliantly. The comparison shots with the kids between Letty and Cora were done tastefully. The delicate way the two women were contrasted during the ironing/gutting scene was very simple yet showed women from two completely different places, both mental and physical that the audience could clearly understand w/o a lot of undue conversations. The many processed shots, especially with the Indian Ghost Horse, were excellent, the tornado special effect was done decently, and the sand shots added strong texture to the film. I could list many more wonderful shots, but I suggest you watch the film instead.Considering how miserable the film was to make, how many difficulties the cast and crew had getting the film in the can and shown in theaters, I have to say that I am very glad they went through the trouble. I will definitely watch The Wind again the next time it blows through.