Melbourne, Australia: THE WIND (1928), SCARLET LETTER (1926)

[mrbertiewooster]

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ACMI Cinemas, Federation Square
Flinders Street, Melbourne

7.00PM, 8 OCT – THE WIND
Victor Seastrom (1928) 95 mins
A refined Virginian girl (Lillian Gish) enters into the “domain of the winds”. An extraordinarily vivid combination of the Western, action film, Scandinavian landscape drama and Griffithian melodrama, Seastrom’s film is one the great works of silent cinema. Shot mostly in the Mojave Desert, this elemental, symbolic, deeply sexual and emotionally devastating film is a virtual symphony of images and suggested sounds. The raging storm and the starkly haunting visage of Gish’s face isolated against the elements are amongst the greatest moments and images in American cinema.
With Lars Hanson, Dorothy Cumming and Montagu Love.
The presentation of ‘The Wind’ by arrangement with Photoplay Productions and Warner Brothers.

8.45PM, 8 OCT – THE SCARLET LETTER
Victor Seastrom (1926) 115 mins
The passions and suffering of a couple and their terrible persecution are achingly captured in this adaptation by Frances Marion of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s beautiful novel of Hester Prynne, a puritan woman who bears the scars of adultery after her clandestine affair with a minister in Salem. Superbly directed by the great Scandinavian portraitist and environmental director Seastrom, this film features remarkable, heart-rending performances by Lillian Gish and Lars Hanson.
35mm print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

[Brooksie]

Good to see some 35mm prints making their way downunder. Get in quick everyone, as the institutions that are usually responsible for these sorts of screenings have had their funding severely squeezed in the past year. There may not be many more such showings in the future.