The western that made Audrey Hepburn’s misfortune | EUROtoday

On May 11, 2025

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IMrs. Director, John Huston touched all cinematographic genres. From his first characteristic movie, Maltese falcon (1941) With Humphrey Bogart within the function of personal detective Sam Spade, he invented the movie Noir. Always with Bogey, he then revolutionized the journey movie with The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948) and African Queen’s Odyssey (1951). On the opposite hand, he didn’t strategy the style of western till 1960 with The wind of the plain (broadcast this night on Arte).

As The prisoner of the desert (1956) shot 4 years earlier by John Ford, The wind of the plain is taken from a novel by Alan Le May. The two books additionally communicate of conflicts between Indians and Whites. In John Ford’s movie, John Wayne performs a darkish and tortured character, who experiences an actual hatred for the Indians. A veteran of the Civil War who goes seeking his nieces kidnapped by the Comanches after the bloodbath of their dad and mom. The wind of the plain Proposes the identical story, inverted: this time, an Indian tribe comes to say a younger lady who was faraway from them fifteen years earlier by a household of white settlers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9picpxwgyh4

Located within the nice plains of Texas, John Huston’s movie focuses on the character of Rachel (Audrey Hepburn), an orphan collected and adopted from beginning by the Zachary, a household of farmers. Indian with out understanding it, this younger girl lives along with her mom (Lillian Gish) and her brothers in an remoted ranch, close to whom the daddy rests, who died, defending his personal in opposition to the Kiowas. Ben (Burt Lancaster, Blond complexion), the eldest of the three brothers, a wealthy breeder, who acts as head of the household, is secretly attracted by his Métis half-sister.

Alas! One day, a mysterious rider armed with a saber, the worrying Abe Kelsey (interpreted by Joseph Wiseman, the ugly James BondWith Sean Connery, D^R No!) makes the noise run that Rachel can be an Indian …

The wind of the plain : a chaotic shoot

Filmed in cinemascope and technicolor for 5 million {dollars}, The wind of the plain has skilled a sophisticated story. It appears that John Huston agreed to shoot this characteristic movie in Mexico with the intention to discover himself close to Cuernavaca and purchase pre-Columbian objects for his assortment of artworks. The taking pictures happened in a desert close to Durango. The wind that swept the area completely induced mud storms that soiled the lenses of the cameras.

But above all, this place was a lair of traffickers. The crew’s pay is stolen and several other murders happen through the pictures. John Huston then known as on its second crew director, the Mexican Emilio Fernandez, to unravel many issues with the native inhabitants (9 years later, Emilio Fernandez will play a tyrant, General Mapache, in The wild horde by Sam Peckinpah).

But different accidents happen. Audrey Hepburn, a number of months pregnant, is a very severe fall on horseback which sends him for six weeks to the hospital. She will lose the kid just a little later. The filmmaker has all the time wished it personally.

On the set, the environment shouldn’t be in fine condition: the relationships between the director and Burt Lancaster are tense. Lillian Gish Bassine the entire crew on the late period of the mute of which she was one of many greatest stars with Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson. Born in 1893, she had turned with the pioneer of cinema DW Griffith in Birth of a nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). In The wind of the plainhis character performs the Mozart on the piano to cowl the noise of the drums on which the Indians hit earlier than the ultimate assault! Surrealist.

In the movie, we additionally discover Audie Murphy who performs the function of Cash, Burt Lancaster’s brother. Audie Murphy was a hero, an actual one. The most adorned American soldier of the Second World War, this distinctive shooter had decimated, injured or taken prisoner greater than 600 Germans. And saved the lifetime of 100 of his comrades. He will obtain from the military thirty-three decorations, together with the Congress’s medal of honor, the very best American navy distinction.

Reverse of the medal: Back to the nation on the age of 21, the ex-soldier suffered from post-traumatic stress. On the set of Plain windthe actor suffers from insomnia and despair. The slightest unusual noise places it in a state of ultra-vigilance. In a faltering psychic state, continually armed, all the time able to shoot rabbits and birds, he sleeps with a pistol loaded below his pillow and steadily takes sleeping tablets. He additionally readily talks about his need to commit suicide, arousing the fixed concern of his companions.

The wind of the plain, The movie denied by its director

John Huston, in his recollections, shouldn’t be tender concerning the Plain wind : “I saw in this story a dramatic potential wider than the one that was planned. I wanted to make a plea against intolerance and racism. Unfortunately, the producers only wanted a trivial action film […] I had the big wrong not to send everything to walk […] Some of my films do not like it, but this one is the only one I really hate […] Recently, we were on television. I turned the button before the end of the first coil… ”

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Answer

However, this western is much from being a negligible movie. His intrigue is even in opposition to the Manichean situations then put in Hollywood. John Huston will then flip one other western, Judge and outlaw (1972) with Paul Newman after a script by John Milius. And won’t ever rub the style once more.

The wind of the plain, by John Huston (United States, 1960). 1 h 57. With Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn, Audie Murphy, Lillian Gish, Doug McClure, John Saxon, Charles Bickford, Joseph Wiseman. Broadcast on Sunday May 11 at 9 p.m. on Arte.

https://www.lepoint.fr/pop-culture/le-vent-de-la-plaine-le-western-qui-fit-le-malheur-d-audrey-hepburn-11-05-2025-2589290_2920.php