Wild is the Wind is a torpid melodrama directed by George Cukor attempting to keep Anna Maganni and Anthony Quinn off the furniture. Quinn looks the role of an aging Italian sheepherder that made good in North America but his character is all my way or the highway stubbornness that Quinn over emotes every other sentence. Maganni plays Goia his wife and sister of his widow with an exhausted look but is also prone to temper tantrums. Cukor is more a less a referee allowing both free range in his interpretation of the Mediterranean personality. It's strictly tourismo neorealismo.
Goia is treated callously and feeling like a stand in for her dead sister takes up with Bene (Tony Franciosa) whose been like a son to Gino. With implications of necrophilia and incest one would think Cukor along with his hot blooded cast would be able to get the story up to a passionate boiling point. Instead we are given shrill rage and tepid desire culminating in a cop out ending. Wild is the Wind calls for high heat but is mostly lukewarm and fails to pull the wool over any one's eyes in its attempt to be more than it is.
Goia is treated callously and feeling like a stand in for her dead sister takes up with Bene (Tony Franciosa) whose been like a son to Gino. With implications of necrophilia and incest one would think Cukor along with his hot blooded cast would be able to get the story up to a passionate boiling point. Instead we are given shrill rage and tepid desire culminating in a cop out ending. Wild is the Wind calls for high heat but is mostly lukewarm and fails to pull the wool over any one's eyes in its attempt to be more than it is.