FILM FILM - University of Macau Library

96 Transition and Transformation
her being dominated by the wind and her fears, incarnated by Roddy who was
the first to announce them, and her newly acquired hope of freedom together
with Lige.
Fig. 15: “I’m not afraid of the wind – I’m not afraid of anything now –!” Happy
ending? (The Wind).
Through the close reading of the subjective sequences and the development of
the story of the wind, a specific connection between the wind and the men in
the story is revealed. This connection is also intimately associated with the problematic
image of masculinity that the film provides. And the new environment
in which Letty arrives is indeed a man’s world. Men riding over the prairie chasing
wild horses, or men competing by shooting – the conditions for life in this
context are exclusively set by men. The only woman in the film, except for Letty
herself, is Cora, her cousin’s wife. In a key sequence in the first part of the film,
which characterizes their relation, Letty, still merry and girlish in her way of
acting, is wearing a light dress and ironing another. Cora, in countershot,
dressed in a big butcher’s apron, is tearing out the heart from a dead cow hanging
from the ceiling, with an enormous knife in her hand. Their conflict is thus
as much grounded in the contrast established in the narration between the one’s