RUSTIC BEAUTY. Review on Wuthering Heights Movie

Wuthering Heights (1939) is director William Wyler's sombre tale of doomed and tragic love, conflicting passions, and revenge. It is considered one of Hollywood's greatest romantic classics. Filmed with haunting beauty, it is the first film version of Emily Bronte's wildly passionate 1847 best-selling literary masterpiece, from a screenplay written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (concentrating on the first two-thirds or 17 chapters of the 34 chapter novel). The black-and-white version is still considered the definitive version - and one of the greatest romantic films ever made.

Bronte's novel narrates the eternal, smouldering love between two soul-mates: adopted gypsy boy Heathcliff and manor-born Cathy, who loves both the stable-boy and her worldly neighbour Edgar. There were numerous other versions of the film, including: a silent version in 1920, director Louis Bunuel's Abismos de Pasion in Spanish (Depths of Passion) (1953), Robert Fuest's UK version of Wuthering Heights (1970) with Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall in the lead roles, French director Jacques Rivette's Hurlevent(1985), Peter Kosminsky's faithfully-told Wuthering Heights (1992) with Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes, and a TV feature Wuthering Heights (1998) as part of the Masterpiece Theatre series.

The 1939 version was a critical success, earning eight Academy Award nominations in one of the most fiercely contested years often called ‘the greatest year in motion picture history.’ The nominations included: Best Picture, Best Actor (Laurence Olivier with his first career nomination), Best Supporting Actress (Geraldine Fitzgerald with her sole career nomination), Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Screenplay, Best Interior Decoration, and Best Original Score. It rightly deserved its sole Academy Award for Gregg Toland's expressionistic, moody Black and White cinematography. This was Toland's only career Oscar, although his acclaimed, deep-focus film technique was also nominated in classics such as Les Miserables (1935), Dead End (1937), Intermezzo: A Love Story (1939), The Long Voyage Home (1940), and Citizen Kane (1941). Also, the film's wonderful musical score by Alfred Newman is unforgettable. Ronald Colman, Douglas Fairbanks, and English actor Robert Newton were all considered for the role eventually played by British stage actor Laurence Olivier. Each of the leading actors began work on the film under miserable circumstances, including the fact that both had their own lovers in England - Merle Oberon had recently fallen in love with Alexander Korda (a major British film figure), and Olivier was separated from his fiancée Vivien Leigh, also in London. For both its major stars, however, the film turned out to be advantageous - it was contract player Merle Oberon's best work in her entire film career, and it established Laurence Olivier as a dashing, leading international film actor (he was nominated as Best Actor for his role).

To add a footnote, it brought Vivien Leigh to Hollywood where she met David O. Selznick and screen tested, albeit, successfully - for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind (1939). Restoring the dangerous passion and morbid obsession crucial to Emily Bronte's novel, Kosminsky's debut feature (1992) eschews melodrama in favour of Gothic romance, with Anne Devlin's skilful screenplay delving deep into the swirling currents of Cathy's forbidden love for the gypsy foundling Heathcliff, whom she later abandons for sensitive, refined Mr Linton. Where the film falls down is in confining itself too much to gloomy rooms, thus failing to point up the contrast between imprisoning social conventions and the pagan pleasures of the moors. Similarly, while Fiennes' flowing black locks and piercing blue eyes make Heathcliff, striding the moors swathed in animal skins, a powerful, darkly attractive figure, Binoche's Cathy lacks the wild sensuality that should underpin her wilfulness. There are problems, too, with the French actress' wavering accent. Nevertheless, this is superior to the l939 Hollywood version in one other respect: instead of ending with the romantic tragedy of Cathy's death, it continues into the next generation, when the spurned Heathcliff returns to claim Wuthering Heights and to take a cruel revenge. A brave stab, but it doesn't always pierce the heart.