Lillian Gish plays a displaced Virginia woman who finds life on the windy Texas prairie with her coarse, cowhand husband (Lars Hanson) unbearable. “The Wind is one of the masterpieces of the silent cinema and Sjöstrom's best American film, matching his Swedish achievements. Throughout the film, Sjöstrom emphasizes the impact of the elements, especially the wind, on his characters. Exteriors were shot in the blistering hot Mojave Desert in Southern California, and so penetrating is the atmosphere that one can almost feel the wind oneself and taste the endless dust. In the opening sequence, the girl arrives by train from Virginia, a land where the grass is always green, and is suddenly hit by a windstorm. Here and elsewhere, Sjöstrom's realistic portrayal of landscape, psychology, and the elements is similar to the style of his Swedish films.... Lillian Gish is as perfect here as she was under Griffith's direction in Broken Blossoms, (and) Lars Hanson is her equal. Seen first as a brutal, coarse, idiotic cowboy...he later becomes a man whose love gives him stature and dignity.” (Georges Sadoul, Dictionary of Films) The film's ending--in which husband and wife unite to conceal a murder--is an unusual sort for Hollywood, favoring instinct over the law.