May. 09, 2003 - 1:12 pm
i was looking for something good to watch from the silent era and this one was recommended to me as being a good Lillian Gish film. i'll likely be watching another of hers later this week. she was surprisingly believable and didn't do too much overacting. that's pretty amazing considering it's a silent film. generally they had to go way over the top with their facial expression and their body movements because of the dullness of their audience. i think present day feature films tend to spoil us in that arena. with theater acting you still have to do this sort of over the top thing to communicate your message to the audience. i personally find it rather laughable when that happens in a big production, but i guess it is necessary.
The Wind is about a girl who moves from the eastern U.S. out to the Texas desert so that her cousin can take care of her. unfortunately the climate around his ranch is insane. there's this insanely violent set of winds that blow through and blow sand everywhere destroying just about everything in their path. aside from her intense fear of the wind and sandstorms, she is also plagued by her male cousin's jealous wife. the wife thinks that Letty will eventually steal her husband from her and decides to try to pawn Letty off on one of the local boys. it's hard to know how this apparent tragedy of unwanted romance and violent weather will be decided.
i mean i love old movies, but it's pretty damned hard to get into a silent film. it's almost like a different world. i'm thankful that most of them weren't extremely long because i just can't take it a lot of the time. now Chaplin films are the exception. they're constantly entertaining...for the most part. oh well, i'm not giving up on silent film yet. some of them are pretty cool and i'm quite sure that i haven't seen all the good ones yet. i mean The Wind was decent, but it didn't knock me off my feet or anything.