Sjöström's best American film is a sweeping silent
melodrama, crafting a potent fusion of European expressionism with a
quintessentially American setting where the grim story of marriage,
attempted rape and murder unfolds. Basically a proto-Western, it's
one of Hollywood's most uncompromising delineations of the hardships
of pioneer life, shot with awe-inspiring intensity on location in the
then barely hospitable Mojave desert. The early scenes seem light in
tone, but the threat of violence dominates from the opening image of a
hurtling train, and the motif of windblown sand becomes a harbinger of
doom. Gish is superb as ever, and the storm climax is justly famous.
