The Wind

For his towering final achievement of the silent era, director Victor Sjöström harnessed the full power of visual storytelling to unleash a maelstrom of psychosexual frenzy. Lillian Gish delivers her last and perhaps greatest silent performance as Letty, a young woman from Virginia who arrives in a desolate Texas town where she finds herself beset by lecherous men, jealous women, and a relentlessly howling desert wind that seems to carry an almost mythic portent. Reaching heights of expressionist horror in an unforgettable windstorm climax, Sjöström’s film conjures a fragile human world that is powerless against the unstoppable forces of nature.