FILM FILM - University of Macau Library

Conquering Nature – The Wind 81
on picture without destroying only hope of making it commercial stop please dont
worry about this regards Irving Thalberg. 8
In Stockholm, the film was screened for the first time on 3 December 1928 at the
China cinema. The most prestigious venue in Sweden, it had opened shortly
before – in October – with Edmond Goulding’s Love. In connection with this
opening, an ambitious advertising programme was distributed, Chinas Filmnytt,
where The Wind was also introduced: “[I]ts story about loving and struggling
is told with a fury, an absorbing intensity that brings Sjöström’s Swedish masterpieces
to mind.” 9 Likewise, Swedish reviews of The Wind emphasized the
connection to Sjöström’s Swedish period: “There is a striking resemblance between
this mystic of no man’s land and the mystic developed by Selma Lagerlöf
in ‘Körkarlen’ –secret forces are at work through supernatural impulses that
poor earthly creatures are not able to penetrate.” 10 It is striking that this film
presents the clearest divergences between Swedish and American reviews.
Whereas the Swedish critics seemed to be even more enthusiastic than usual,
their American colleagues on the contrary were quite negative; whereas Swedes
saw the film as “national” in its imagery of nature, Americans tended, as we
shall see, to judge this symbolic quality as being too obvious. Interestingly enough,
in one review, Sjöström had become American; he is mentioned among
“our” directors, sharing their problematic qualities, and he is criticized for having
forgotten his special Scandinavian touch. The obviousness with which he is
now accused turns out to be the same characteristic of Hollywood cinema –
which has been named an excessively obvious cinema – that he was previously
said to have avoided in The Tower of Lies:
The film shows one bad tendency of our directors and scenarists, its atmospheric
chord is twanged too often. In the present case in their anxiety to make the wind felt
and heard (and sound synchronisation will only make matters worse), they have
blown the bellows and shovelled the sand over-long and with too much energy. It is
surprising that Victor Seastrom, noted in his Scandinavian days for his eerie touch
and delicate hintings, should so far have lost sight of the art of suggestion in a story
made exclusively to his hand as to have, so to speak, piled it on until the illusion is
well nigh buried under and winnowed away. What might have become imaginative
cinema has been made obvious movie, no mater what excellent movie it may be. 11
Mordaunt Hall in The New York Times was even more sharp in his comments on
the film. Sjöström this time is accused of having overworked the film, the result
thus becoming too obvious:
Victor Seastrom hammers home his points until one longs for just a suggestion of
subtlety. The villain’s sinister smile appears to last until his dying breath. Mr. Seastrom’s
wind is like some of the vocal effects in sound pictures, for nobody can deny