MAJOR SPOILERS
This was very much a Lillian Gish project apparently. The actress presented MGM with a treatment of Dorothy Scarborough's novel (from which Frances Marion wrote the script) and hand-picked her director and leading man. The result is a film that is rightly regarded as a silent classic, but which also emphasises the changes all aspects of film-making would undergo with the introduction of sound. In fact, the film bombed when it was released, and it was only long after its initial release that it was re-assessed.
Lillian Gish is very much the star of the film, and its easy to understand why she was such a major star of the silent screen. Her beauty is luminescent, and she has a fine natural style that largely avoids the grand gestures employed by some contemporaries whose reputations haven't stood the test of time as well as Gish's has. Swedish actor Lars Hanson, whose US career would be finished by the introduction of sound, also gives an impressive naturalistic performance, conveying more with his eyes than facial gestures. And the assured direction of the great Swedish director Victor Sjostrom adds class to a thin plot that could have been pure melodrama in the hands of a less accomplished director. The scenes following Letty's murder of Roddy - another great performance, this time from Montagu Love - in which she imagines the wind uncovering his body are especially powerful. It should also be mentioned that the final dramatic scenes are enhanced immeasurably by a flawless soundtrack from Carl Davis.
It's ironic that MGM insisted the original ending - in which a crazed Letty wanders off to certain death in the desert - be changed for a less powerful, but still satisfying happy ending. With the introduction of the Hays Code just a few years after this film was produced, the studio would have insisted that the troubled Letty be denied a happy outcome because she has committed the crime of murder...
This was very much a Lillian Gish project apparently. The actress presented MGM with a treatment of Dorothy Scarborough's novel (from which Frances Marion wrote the script) and hand-picked her director and leading man. The result is a film that is rightly regarded as a silent classic, but which also emphasises the changes all aspects of film-making would undergo with the introduction of sound. In fact, the film bombed when it was released, and it was only long after its initial release that it was re-assessed.
Lillian Gish is very much the star of the film, and its easy to understand why she was such a major star of the silent screen. Her beauty is luminescent, and she has a fine natural style that largely avoids the grand gestures employed by some contemporaries whose reputations haven't stood the test of time as well as Gish's has. Swedish actor Lars Hanson, whose US career would be finished by the introduction of sound, also gives an impressive naturalistic performance, conveying more with his eyes than facial gestures. And the assured direction of the great Swedish director Victor Sjostrom adds class to a thin plot that could have been pure melodrama in the hands of a less accomplished director. The scenes following Letty's murder of Roddy - another great performance, this time from Montagu Love - in which she imagines the wind uncovering his body are especially powerful. It should also be mentioned that the final dramatic scenes are enhanced immeasurably by a flawless soundtrack from Carl Davis.
It's ironic that MGM insisted the original ending - in which a crazed Letty wanders off to certain death in the desert - be changed for a less powerful, but still satisfying happy ending. With the introduction of the Hays Code just a few years after this film was produced, the studio would have insisted that the troubled Letty be denied a happy outcome because she has committed the crime of murder...