Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights is directed by William Wyler and adapted to screenplay by Charles MacArthur & Ben Hecht from the novel of the same name written by Emily Bronte. It stars Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, David Niven, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Flora Robson. Music is scored by Alfred Newman and cinematography is by Gregg Toland. OK, so it's only a part of Bronte's classic novel, and yes some liberties have been taken, but Wuthering Heights is still a wonderfully involving picture. Expertly played by the actors and directed with adroitness, it's a haunting tale of tragedy, love and passions never to be sated. Moodily photographed by Toland, who won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography in the process, tale unfolds in flashback style that's aided by retrospect narration from Robson's wily house keeper Ellen Dean. Characters are perfectly formed as children, expanded upon into adulthood; with Olivier and Oberon coming into their own on the acting front, then the story reaches its denouement to leave the viewer flushed with emotion. All given dramatic impetus by Alfred Newman's sweeping score. 1939 was a stellar year for classic cinema, Wuthering Heights is deservedly a part of that upper echelon number. Brilliant. 9/10

While a lot has been removed from the original Emily Bronte book, what has been transfered into the lavishly beautiful original film version has made it a classic that holds up like very few other films do. Released in the most classic film year ever, this shines above every other film in my book, even more outstanding than the two most remembered films of 1939: "Gone With the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz". Merle Oberon is the "wild, sweet Cathy", a pampered rich girl from the Moors who is loved by many but loves only one. Laurence Olivier is her childhood companion, Heathcliff, a gypsy boy taken in by her late father then tossed to the stables by her cruel older brother. As the years go by, Cathy and Heathcliff's affection turns into love, one that no boundaries can cross. Even when he goes away to America to make his fortune, he's not far from her thoughts. She marries a locally prominent man (Edgar Linton, played with gentility by David Niven) and out of spite, the returning Heathcliff marries Edgar's love-starved sister, Isabelle (Geraldine Fitzgerald in a truly tender performance that is downright tragic). Sick with jealousy and hatred towards what he has done simply to hurt her, Cathy regresses from life, hanging on by a balance. Everything about this film is truly outstanding, from the breathtaking photography and glorious musical score to the art direction, editing and yes, even the screenplay which took simply the choice bits of elements from the original book. William Wyler directs with panache, and every performance is filled with subtleties that can't be denied after repeat viewings. Merle Oberon, sadly overlooked for an Oscar Nomination, gives the greatest performance of her career, showing that beyond being an exotic beauty, she was also highly underrated. Every essence of Cathy is explored, and even in her most spoiled and selfish moments, you can't help but love her. Olivier is perfectly brooding, the aches within him so deep over a love he knows he can't have on earth taking over his own tortured soul. The supporting players are all outstanding, and special honors must go to the wise and winning performance of Flora Robson as Wuthering Heights' long-time housekeeper who seems to die herself as the climax approaches and tragedy has erupted. Hence her return to her original home which has decayed while the Lintons remained bright and elegant. Donald Crisp is wise and compassionate, yet stern, as the local doctor; Hugh Williams straight out of a Dickens novel as the cruel brother who decays along with Wuthering Heights; Leo G. Carroll as the loyal butler; and Cecil Humphreys as the kind man who took the waif Heathcliff in originally. So purists can get off their high horse and simply accept what the writers chose to include for a lengthy film which never seems to be as long as it is. If the classic novels of all time were filmed exactly as written, they would have to be at least 3 hours long, which is why BBC and PBS (and the occasional American networks) eventually did many of them as Mini-Series.

A number of years ago a mystery novel was published that has, as it's secret, the discovery of the complete manuscript of a second novel by Emily Bronte. Unfortunately nothing like that has ever surfaced, so we are stuck with only one book penned by her. If that one book was THE PROFESSOR or SHIRLEY (Charlotte's two least good novels), Emily would long ago have been forgotten, and we would see more interest in her younger sister Anne. But Emily left us WUTHERING HEIGHTS. It is rare for a writer to turn out such a stunning masterpiece only once and never write anything again. JANE EYRE is a well structured organized novel, and it has passions revealed. As I have mentioned elsewhere it is a novel where the heroine was in a lowly position and dared to love her employer (something shocking in 1847). But WUTHERING HEIGHTS has a similar story but with more symbolic raw power. Here it is not a female servant loving her master but a male (of gypsy heritage) who loves and is loved by the daughter of his patron. But the patron dies, and his jealous son treats the gypsy as the lowliest of servants. How the gypsy boy finds his love seemingly rejected, and how he eventually lives only for revenge against those he feels wronged him becomes the meat of the plot here. And all the sturm und drang is played out against the wild moors with their hints of sexual freedom. It was powerful stuff in 1847 Victorian England, and it remains really powerful today. If Bronte could not write anything else due to her early death, this novel still enshrined her among the great novelists. The only element of the plot that is lost is Hindley's family. He has a wife briefly in the novel (that is how he has a son named Hareton that Heathcliff torments in his revenge). The wife, named Frances, dies soon after giving birth. No mention of her, nor of Hareton and young Cathy and Heathcliff's son by Isabelle called Linton. Possibly, like the streamlining of the 1944 JANE EYRE by dropping the Rivers from the story, this was just as well. Olivier had the Byronic good looks (of a dark, saturnine type) that fit the part of the tormented, devilish Heathcliff. And Merle Oberon (who had already appeared opposite Olivier in THE DIVORCE OF LADY X) was given her best part as the confused, doomed Cathy: she loves Heathcliff (as she tells Nellie - Flora Robson) but she has a willingness to take up with Edgar (David Niven) because he is civilized, and caring when she is injured, and she thinks Heathcliff deserted her. Niven really had his first meaty dramatic role as Edgar, and Geraldine Fitzgerald was quite good as the sadly disillusioned Isabel (who loved not wisely but too well). The stark cinematography by Gregg Toland, and direction by William Wyler makes this the best film made of any of the Bronte novels to date.

I watched this movie just after reading Emily Bronte's brilliant novel Wuthering Heights, and I found the film to be a major letdown - in fact, it may be the worst film adaptation of a novel I've ever seen - and that's saying a lot. Everything that made the novel unique and wonderful is missing from this movie. For example, Heathcliff and Cathy's relationship, but in this movie, it seems silly, superficial, and unconvincing. In the novel, there is a sense of isolation - but in the movie, the Grange is constantly full of people! I suppose you might enjoy this movie if you're a fan of old romance films, but otherwise, it's almost painful to watch, especially if you've read the novel.

A sideburned mannequin falls in love with a severely bi-polar woman and spends the rest of the movie making literally *everyone* around him pay for it. Heathcliff's thirst for emotional revenge borders on the Shakespearean, but unless you're my brother, this is one long snooze-fest. Internet Movie Database makes you write a minimum of ten lines for a review, but the above is really all I have to say about "Wuthering Heights." So I'll pad this out by saying that I did respond to Hindley popping Heathcliff in the face with a large stone. But after that I pretty much spent the rest of the movie thinking about other movies I like better. Okay. Still not ten lines. Well, one of the movies I thought of that I liked better was "Casablanca." That's a movie about doomed love and a man who makes everyone suffer for his own suffering. Better music, direction, setting, acting, dialogue, and nobody dies at the end. Well, except Major Strasse, but he pretty much had it coming, didn't he?

I have not read the Emily Bronte novel on which this film is based so obviously I cannot comment on the effectiveness of it as an adaptation (I understand that almost the entire second half of the book was excised). However, I thoroughly enjoyed the film. Oberon and especially Olivier, one of my favorites, are very convincing and moving as the doomed lovers Cathy and Heathcliff (according to my friend, Heathcliff is written as being much more likeable in the film than in the book). The supporting cast was also very good. Wuthering Heights just deals very poignantly with the effect that birth and status have on people's lives. Yet another winner from Wyler. My score 9/10.

Before I wrote this review I talked to someone else who also had done a review of this film here. Young Heathcliff is brought to the Yorkshire moors by Cecil Kellaway who was the father of Merle Oberon and Hugh Williams. He seemed to be dropped into the Earnshaw family without any rhyme or reason. Kellaway finds the scruffy kid on the streets of Liverpool and brings him back to the family estate in Yorkshire. I asked if in fact Emily Bronte wrote more of this than what we saw. The answer was no. That in itself was curious because the version we see here was quite condensed from the original story. Still enough of Wuthering Heights survives on the screen to tell Emily Bronte's tale of lost love that cannot be because of class distinction. Merle Oberon is a beautiful and fetching Kathy who grows up with scruffy young Heathcliff and she becomes his soul-mate. Yet class being what it was and to some extent still is, she can't and/or won't marry him. He's just the stable-boy, and her brother is jealous of him and his presence. One piece of snobbery becomes too much and Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff leaves as he promised for good to make fame and fortune. That was a common theme in English literature, used by Dickens among others as well as Emily Bronte here. It was an indirect attack on the class system of Europe, let alone the United Kingdom. The opportunities are in the new world and the colonies. Olivier comes back, but the love and tender feelings he did possess for Oberon are replaced by a brooding vengeance seeking man. He successfully humbles the people that snubbed him, but at a terrible cost to his psyche. Laurence Oliver came back to America after a previous visit to Hollywood where he didn't set the world on fire. His trip was almost an afterthought, his wife Vivien Leigh was to be Scarlett O'Hara, so he signed to do Wuthering Heights at the same time under Sam Goldwyn with William Wyler directing. Though he may have been inpatient with William Wyler's deliberate style of movie-making, he credited Wyler with being the first director who really taught him the difference between acting for the stage and for the screen. Olivier got the first of his Oscar nominations for Best Actor and he was up for that award with Clark Gable for Gone With the Wind, James Stewart for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Mickey Rooney for Babes in Arms. They all went down to Robert Donat in Goodbye Mr. Chips. Wuthering Heights took one Oscar home, best black and white cinematography for Gregg Toland. Geraldine Fitzgerald got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress as the woman on the neighboring estate who develops a Statue of Liberty size torch for Olivier who can't see her for beans, but marries her anyway in some twisted act of revenge against her brother, played by David Niven, who married Oberon. Oscar nominations went to the film for Best Picture and to William Wyler for Best Director and several other technical nominations went to the film as well. David Niven liked working with Olivier, Oberon and the rest, but he hated his part of Edgar Linton. He felt it had no depth to him, but it was a typical David Niven part, full of surface charm and little else. Over 60 years later Wuthering Heights is still a film for lovers of all ages. We all hope in the next world that Olivier and Oberon have a better life and start on an equal plane.

I have read the novel. I could write a long review about how brilliant the novel was and how it did not go with the tradition love story one would expect. Furthermore, the novel did not have the traditional heroes and villains. That is why the novel is so great. Hollywood, however, just couldn't stand it could they? They had to turn it into a traditional soppy love story about soul mates (Heatchcliff and Catherine.) The truth is, Catherine, in the novel, loved Edgar, maybe more than Heathcliff. Furthermore, Heathcliff, in the novel, though starting off as a victim, turned into a horrible villain. The movie makes him out to be a hero for the most part, though he is cold to his wife Isabel. In the novel, he is downright abusive to her. This film version took away everything that was original and great about the novel. Many who have read the novel didn't like it because their simple minds can't handle going form sympathising with Heathcliff to hating him. Hollywood certainly pandered to that crowd. The only thing in this film worth seeing for actual entertainment is Olivier. The acting is brilliant, as one would expect from the greatest actor of all time. I don't like traditional love stories, but Olivier did it as well as it could be done. The early scene with him looking out the window calling for Catherine to come to him is moving. I also have to give credit to the music. It complemented Olivier's acting perfectly. Olivier gets a 10, the rest of the movie a 1. I decided to give it overall a 4 out of 10. Even with Olivier, this garbage must have a below average rating.