1926 - Sjostrom's THE WIND, A Masterpiece

This is probably the best movie I've seen in the last four months. The actress Lillian Gish approached MGM in 1926 with a novel called The Wind. The book was about a woman from Virginia relocating to the American West. She ends up in a part of the country where the wind is constantly howling. The film is a love story, a drama, a horror story and a western rolled into a psychological study of a woman's emotional breakdown.

 

Gish was the producer behind this project. She found the book, prepared a synopsis of the story, hired the screenwriter, picked the cast and arranged for the Swedish Director Victor Sjostrom to direct.

Sjostrom was literally the father of Swedish film. He was a major influence on Ingmar Bergman and appeared in one of Bergman's best films Wild Strawberries in an outstanding performance at the age of 78.

In her introduction to the film, Gish comments that it was the toughest film she ever worked on, and after watching it, she's not kidding. No wimps were allowed making this film, the cast must have taken a real beating during the production.

 

Lillian Gish was one tough little cookie. She started in movies with D.W. Griffith and was still performing at age 96. No film is perfect and apparently MGM was so apprehensive over the film that they literally stuck on a happy ending the last 3 minutes of the film, but ignore it.

The Wind is an outstanding example of a talented European director working with a superb actress and cast and using the technical facilities that a major American studio could bring to produce a brilliant film. Very highly recommended.