The Wind

The Wind (1928)

A tornado of human emotions.

When Letty Mason 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, Beverly, she receives a surprisingly cold welcome from his wife, Cora. Soon tensions in the family and unwanted attention from a trio of suitors leave Letty increasingly disturbed.

Date of release
1928-09-15
TMDB
7.3 / 10 (142)
Runtime
1h 16m
Genres
Drama, Western, Romance, Thriller
Director
Victor Sjöström

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: The Wind
  • Filmed in: California

The Wind is a 1928 American synchronized sound romantic drama film directed by Victor Sjöström. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using both the sound-on-disc and sound-on-film process. The movie was adapted by Frances Marion from the 1925 novel of the same name written by Dorothy Scarborough. Featuring Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson and Montagu Love, it is one of the last films released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer without audible dialogue and is considered to be among the greatest "silent" films.

Production

Gish came up with the idea of making a film adaptation of the novel of the same name. Irving Thalberg immediately gave her permission to do so. Gish recalled wanting Lars Hanson as her leading man after seeing him in a Swedish film with Greta Garbo. She also assigned Victor Sjöström as the director herself. Sjöström had directed Gish before in the 1926 film The Scarlet Letter.

In the original novel, the heroine is driven mad when the wind uncovers the corpse of the man she has killed. She then wanders off into a windstorm to die. According to Gish and popular legend, the original ending intended for the film was the unhappy ending, but it was changed in response to the decree, by the studio's powerful Eastern office, that a more upbeat ending be shot.

The film was shot partially near Bakersfield and the Mojave Desert, California.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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