Classic Silent Film The Wind (1928) with Organ Accompaniment

Following on from sell-out showings of Steamboat Bill Jr, Wings and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, acclaimed film organist Donald MacKenzie (resident organist at the Odeon, Leicester Square) returns to St John's Notting Hill to accompany a big-screen showing of classic silent film The Wind (1928). This masterpiece of the late silent film is famous for its elemental and emotional forces. An incessant, fearsome wind (whipped up by the use of 7 aircraft propellers in the Californian Mojave desert) slowly drives Letty (Lilian Gish), stuck in a rickety shack on an inhospitable American prairie, out of her mind….

Don't miss this special event, featuring the evocative music of the restored organ. There will be popcorn and a bar available on the night, with the church candlelit.

The Film
One of the indisputable achievements of the silent era, Victor Seastrom’s film is a melodrama of elemental force. As it begins, the heroine Letty (Lilian Gish) moves from her Virginia home to Sweet Water on the western prairies to live on the ranch of her cousin Beverly, his wife Cora and their three children. Letty quickly learns how inhospitable the environment in Sweet Water is, with an incessant, fearsome wind - Letty has an unrelenting battle with the sand that swirls and gusts everywhere. But equally inhospitable is both the unrefined way that people in Sweet Water live, and Cora, who believes Letty has come to steal Beverly away from her. As such, Cora orders Letty out of her house. With no money, Letty is forced to accept one of the two marriage proposals she receives, the lesser evil being that from Bev and Cora's ranching neighbour, Lige Hightower, a man who she does not love.

Trapped without money or means of flight at his isolated, rickety cabin, the wind - with its ceaseless howl, its hammering of sand against the window, and its encroachment through cracks in her floors and walls - slowly drives her out of her mind. Is the wind as brutal as it appears, or does it just seem that way to the slowly deteriorating Letty? She sees it as a bucking white ghost-stallion straight from Fuselian nightmare. Whatever the case, it all leads to a nightmarish showdown with an unwelcome visitor, a famous scene from the silent-era catalogue.