The Wind is a 1928 American synchronized sound romantic drama film directed by Victor Sjöström.

While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using both the sound-on-disc and sound-on-film process.

[3] An impoverished young woman named Letty Mason travels west by train from Virginia to live at her cousin Beverly's isolated ranch in Sweetwater, Texas.

Fellow passenger and cattle buyer Wirt Roddy makes her acquaintance and tells her the wind usually drives women crazy.

Upon arrival, she is picked up by Beverly's closest neighbors, Lige Hightower and the older, balding Sourdough, who live 15 miles from her cousin.

Most of the guests seek shelter in the basement, where Wirt declares his love for Letty and offers to take her away from the dismal place.

Out of her mind with fear as she endures the house shaking from the worst wind storm yet, Letty faints soon after Wirt's arrival.

After a few moments, Letty returns to sanity and recognizes Lige; she is so glad to see him, she frantically kisses her husband.

In 2019, the Dallas Chamber Symphony commissioned an original film score for The Wind from composer Alain Mayrand.

[4] The score premiered during a concert screening on November 23, 2019 at Moody Performance Hall with Richard McKay conducting.

[5] This film featured a theme song entitled "Love Brought The Sunshine" which was composed by William Axt, David Mendoza, Herman Ruby and Dave Dreyer.

Gish recalled wanting Lars Hanson as her leading man after seeing him in a Swedish film with Greta Garbo.

Mayer's biographer rejects this on account that the "sad ending" is not known to exist in any form, written or filmed.

At its time it was simultaneously panned and hailed by American critics, and its late release at the dawn of the sound era contributed to a net loss for the production.

The British newspaper, The Guardian, in 1999 reviewed the work of director Victor Sjöström and they wrote, And in America his three most famous works—He Who Gets Slapped (1924), The Scarlet Letter (1926) and The Wind (1928)—each dealt with human suffering.

The Wind is almost certainly the best—a silent classic, revived in recent years by producer/director Kevin Brownlow with a Carl Davis score, which gave the great Lillian Gish one of the finest parts of her career...Sjostrom treats the inevitable clash between Letty and her new surroundings with considerable realism and detail, allowing Gish as much leeway as possible to develop her performance.

The entire film was shot in the Mojave Desert under conditions of great hardship and difficulty and this was probably the first 'Western' that tried for truth as well as dramatic poetry.

One of its masterstrokes, which looks far less self-conscious than any description of it may seem, is the moment when Letty hallucinates in terror at the sight of the partially buried body of her attacker.

"[16] Biographer Lewis Jacobs compares The Wind favorably to Austrian-American filmmaker Erich von Stroheim’s 1924 masterpiece Greed: The Wind becomes the physical expression of the emotional struggle of the characters…the outstanding quality of the film was its documentary realism, which had much in common with Greed.

[20]Film historian Scott Eyman locates the theme in a social issue that preoccupied Hollywood in the late 1920s: “the dangers of the city, and the homicidal small-mindedness of the country.”[21][22] Eyman writes: [T]he studios were awash in stories about a woman from the city who comes to a rural environment where her innate erotic charge disrupts the social and family order, usually with disastrous result.