Director: Victor Sjostrom
Composer: Erland Cooper
The Wind is a 1928 silent film by Victor Sjostrom, incidentally billed as “Victor Seastrom” on the copy used at the Howard. Scottish composer Erland Cooper, commissioned to compose a new score for the film, settled on the female voices of the Chorus of Opera North, plus clarinet and bass clarinet and himself in charge of the electronics.
The film is well titled. Presented as a vehicle for Lillian Gish, it is dominated by the wind. Initially the train moving west and carrying Lottie (Gish) encounters violent wind storms, but that train is the last object in civilisation that Gish encounters. On the train Wirt Roddy makes her acquaintance and promises to drop in to her cousin’s ranch.
The innocent Gish proves to be a rather unlikely femme fatale for all the locals. Lige Hightower and Sourdough meet her off the train and are soon competing for her attention. Beverly, her cousin, delighted to meet her, is the object of his wife Cora’s jealousy. Cora throws her out, she flees to Roddy, finds he is married and returns to marry Lige. The final climax comes via the arrival of the wind in a “norther” when Lottie, driven to temporary insanity by it, shoots Roddy who has returned and proposed running away together.
So the film follows a melodramatic plot, but is far more than that, aside from Gish’s superbly modulated performance. The wild wind scenes, filmed in the Mojave Desert, and the appearance of the horses in the wind, are hugely successful. The moment when European expressionism registers mostly effectively comes near the end. Roddy is dead and buried in a shallow grave outside and then a hand appears round the door. Eventually the man outside appears – and it is Lige!
Erland Cooper strives for the accessible in his score – and achieves that, notably in the hymn-like sequence that follows the main film. His swirlingly dramatic wind effects, aided by wordless vocals, make their mark, sometimes rather too loudly. His refusal to respond to hints of songs in the film adds to the monotonous assertion of the power that exists in Nature.
Clarinet and bass clarinet pick up briefly on melodies, Cooper asserts the power of the electronic and the Chorus gives immaculate voice to the wordless expressionism of the music. It works in enhancing the mesmeric qualities of the film, but it’s possible to feel that he could have taken a more adventurous approach with the melodrama.
Reviewed at Howard Assembly Room on February 26th 2022
