The War, the West, and the Wilderness – By Kevin Brownlow (1979) PDF Download

 

The War, the West, and the Wilderness – By Kevin Brownlow (1979) PDF Download

  • The War, The West and the Wilderness
  • By Kevin Brownlow – 1979
  • Alfred A. Knopf – New York
  • Manufactured in the United States of America – First Edition

Lars Hanson and Lillian Gish – The Wind


THE WIND


The wretched conditions of sand, wind, and drought that characterized the Sundown location were brilliantly evoked in bleak, Scandinavian style by Victor Seastrom in MGM’s The Wind (1927, released 1928). Although more of a psychological than a realistic study, and more impressionistic than documentary in its treatment, The Wind is filled with remarkably expressive detail. For an utterly unromantic view of life on the desert, this film is unequaled.
Lillian Gish plays a delicate Virginia girl who comes to live with her cousin and finds the life intolerable. The wind howls symbolically around the tiny shack, until nerve ends are stretched to the breaking point. Even the children, usually a sentimental high point of a silent film, are treated abrasively; Lillian Gish makes a friendly, playful gesture to her cousin s small child, and receives a slap across the face. The cowboys are equally unromantic, and expectorate on the floor Lillian struggles to keep clean. She braces herself to finding sand in the bread, sand in the water, sand in her bed. She eventually has to wash the dishes with sand. The carcass of a steer hangs in the center of the room, and her cousin’s wife, already jealous of Lillian’s presence, slices unmentionable sections of its interior while Lillian holds back her repulsion.
The picture originally ended with Lillian Gish wandering into the desert, insane, after killing a rancher. Eight exhibitors, reported Irving Thalberg, refused to run the picture with that ending, and a new sequence had to be shot showing her acceptance of her life. “It broke our hearts,” said Lillian Gish.

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