The Wind (1928)

The Wind is a 1928 silent drama film starring Lilian Gish. Wikipedia says, "it is one of the last silent films released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and is considered to be among the greatest silent films."

You can watch it online at this link. The sound track there is a strange addition, and I ended up muting it. It's a silent film, after all. Here's a trailer:

The Guardian highlights director Viktor Sjostrom, saying,

Between 1917 and 1921 he made four films of such technical mastery and luminous power that it was only a matter of time before Hollywood lured him across the water.

These films, full of the almost masochistic obsessions of Swedish Protestantism, but also extremely beautiful in their depiction of the elemental forces of nature, caused Sjostrom, together with his equally famous fellow director Mauritz Stiller, to be characterised as a gloomy Swede, even though he both acted in and made comedies too. And in America his three most famous works - He Who Gets Slapped (1924), The Scarlet Letter (1926) and The Wind (1928) - each dealt with human suffering.

The Wind is almost certainly the best - a silent classic...

Senses of Cinema says,

Widely considered one of the last great silent American films, Victor Sjöström’s The Wind is also one of the few Hollywood films that is truly alive to the elements, to the atmosphere and physicality of place. Sjöström’s career – both in Europe and America – is populated by films that examine the relationship of human characters to their environments.

Rotten Tomatoes has a critics consensus rating of 100%.

Here's a screenshot from the movie:

showing the sharing of a cuppa in the isolated wilds of Texas. She's newly arrived from Virginia to live with her cousin and his wife, and nothing is as she expected. I'll be more comfortable than they look as I join the bloggers at the weekly T Stand for Tuesday gathering.