Review of The Wind Is My Lover

Singoalla (original title) is a visually stunning film with a haunting score, truly a lost classic. It deserves to have the same reputation as Cocteau's La belle et la bête (1946). It is based on a Swedish legend of a young nobleman in a castle, Erland (Alf Kjellin), who falls in love with a gypsy girl, Singoalla (Viveca Lindfors). Erland is similar to Hamlet in many ways - lonely, unhappy, brooding. Many things go wrong for the romantic star-crossed lovers. The film has wonderful scenes in the countryside, at the castle, and at the gypsy camp; and besides the love story, viewers will also enjoy medieval fight scenes with knives and bows & arrows. There are three versions: the Swedish (over 100 minutes), the American/British (cut down to 63 minutes), and the French (over 100 minutes, with a different actor playing Erland). Only the Swedish version has been restored and reissued. The three language versions have many titles including: Singoalla (Sweden), Singoalla (France, different actor), Gypsy Fury (USA), The Wind is My Lover (UK), The Mask and the Sword (UK). Each of the three versions was edited differently and even scored slightly differently. The Swedish seems to me the most successful cut, perhaps best representing the director's original artistic intent. But all three versions are unforgettable. The Swedish DVD can be ordered from Bengans.com (select "outside the EU" if ordering from the USA). The other two versions are on Youtube but hard to find. To watch the first reel of the American/British version, search on Bing.com for "youtube Gypsy Fury viveca lindfors". To watch the entire French version search on Bing.com for "youtube Singoalla viveca lindfors". (Bing.com works better for finding Youtube videos than Youtube's own search or even Google search.) I first saw Gypsy Fury in the 1950s at age 11 on KTLA in Los Angeles. It came on again when I was 13, and I played hooky to watch it again. It took another 50 years to see it again in any form, and 60 years to see the beautifully restored Swedish version released in December 2013. See also a publicity booklet on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/SingoallaAkaWindIsMyLoverAkaGypsyFuryBooklet