Wild Is the Wind

Hollywood’s finest director of actresses, George Cukor, met the great Italian film diva in Wild Is the Wind. Magnani’s quicksilver passions adapted interestingly to the world of American melodrama in this film shot on location in Nevada. Gino (Anthony Quinn), a wealthy sheep rancher, brings over his late wife’s sister (Magnani) from Italy as his bride in the vain hope of recreating his first marriage. Her robust humor and rowdy sensuality make her loneliness and isolation all the more poignant as she embarks on an affair with a ranch hand; she has something in common with the doomed animals, as Cukor’s direction makes clear.