It's indeed an irony that silent films were just getting really good when sound came in and killed everything. Lillian Gish is great as a young woman who moves to a terribly windy and inhospitable dustbowl to live with her cousin - her problems begin when his wife hates her. Then two neighbours offer to marry her, and though she's tempted to move away by a third man, he's a cad who is already married. And all the while, the wind, the wind. The storm sequence itself - all light and fury and motion - is incredible.
Good cast too: Lars Hanson (the man she is forced to marry), Montagu Love (the cad), Dorothy Cumming, Edward Earle, William Orlamond (the other proposer).
Orlamond is there as a little comic relief. Great scene where Gish and her new husband are finally alone and she is clearly disgusted by everything. Nicely worked out story by Frances Marion, from a novel by Dorothy Scarborough (hopefully not in any way autobiographical).
Only thing - the print I saw was 74 minutes but the film is supposed to run 88. Would like to hear the version with the 1983 Carl Davis score, but the film is hard enough to get hold of as it is. (Maybe it was the Carl Davis version - there were no credits.) Having said that, I was glad I had two copies as the first one I tried had a music track of such weirdness to render it unwatchable - recorded live in front of an audience of two, by the sounds of it.
Exceptional photography by John Arnold, filmed in the Mojave Desert.
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