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Having just watched Desire Under the Elms before watching this, I couldn’t help but notice a parallel between the two films. Both star Italian actresses of great magnetism, earthiness and sensuality as housewives with unfulfilling marriages who have affairs with the attractive younger stud in closest proximity. But whereas Sophia Loren eventually found some success in Hollywood, her epics El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire are the very best of that genre and her performance in Arabesque is appropriately charming, humorous and seductive, Anna Magnani never found as much success as an actress in Hollywood outside of Tennessee Williams adaptations.
Wild is the Wind is pretty tone-deaf, predictable and hyperbolic in its florid melodrama and unsettled moral convictions. But at least it has Anna Magnani as the central driving force behind it. Movie star vehicles are a strange breed, sometimes a great star can upend a movie because we can only think of them as one thing and it becomes difficult to change that course in our minds. Sometimes, through their sheer charisma and talents as an actor, they can make any ol’ piece of dreck immensely watchable and enjoyable. That is almost the case here with Magnani.
As an actress she seems unbound by the conventions of what we can consider quality acting. You never know where she is going to go or how she is going to do it. At times when we think “This will be the big crying scene,” and instead she plays it in a totally different way. Her manic outbursts and expressive hand gestures punctuate moments or help to fill in the gaps in this thinly written film. She isn’t beautiful in the conventional sense, but she is undeniably commanding and lovely in front of the camera. Her long nose and strong jaw give her face character and she is unlike so many of the disposable starlets that parade across the screen. Just getting a chance to sit back and view her is an absolute joy. So while Wild Is the Wind may veer off into areas approaching close to unintentional humor or convulsive eye-rolling, at least we can watch an original and unique artist at work.
