Why the first ever Wuthering Heights film adaptation was terrific, but also could have been much better.
When Thornton-born Emily Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights almost a century before its first film adaptation, it was clear that she always intended the narrative to be as much a protest at the injustices of contemporary society as a love story. This was combined with graphically and courageously depicting the ugly side of love; the way it drives people mad, jealous, depressed, and eventually to the point where love becomes hatred; as well as the way love and hatred overlap. The novel does not depict love positively; especially when compared to textbook romances that are often about a warmer, healthier brand of love defying odds and boundaries. Wuthering Heights, if anything, is about the boundaries succeeding and about love having its consequent ugly side.
In fact, you could argue that Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights was not far away from being closer to a Horror than a typical Romance.
Take some of the actions of the notorious Anti-Hero protagonist, Heathcliff, for example. He hangs puppies, attempts to imprison his vulnerable wife (Isabella), and has sexual intercourse with Cathy’s corpse. In the film, dark themes such as Hindley’s alcoholism are explored, but there is no mention of hanging puppies, the children are peacefully and structurally informed that their father has peacefully passed him away instead of finding him unexpectedly dead all of a sudden, and the film effectively finishes with Cathy’s death so there is no dry-humping of rotting corpses. There is depiction of Heathcliff’s loveless attitude towards Isabella post-marriage, but the domestic violence that occurs in the novel is not even truly hinted at in the film, never mind graphically portrayed. And in fairness, Isabella’s desire to escape Wuthering Heights and her decaying marriage is never really conveyed; she is still persevering during the last phase we see of her.
Heathcliff is just depressed and distant. The lack of physical abuse is probably a fair call from William Wyler (the film’s Germany-born director) for the sake of watchability, but he doesn’t attempt to emulate the kind of emotional abuse that occurs in the novel. Though on a positive note, Heathcliff staring into the mirror and rhetorically demanding an answer for why God gave him life after pushing away a haplessly love-pleading Isabella is gripping and a rare example of the film being almost as dark as the novel. Mental health being a theme in its own right in an early Victorian Era novel encapsulates just how far Emily Bronte was ahead of her time. I recall suicide being dubbed by someone I knew as a coward’s escape during childhood, and I was born in 2001. What would they have said if they were brought up in the 1840s?
I loved the film but thought it was far from perfect. Firstly, it should have been longer. Some important aspects of the plot felt rushed, under-developed and just a bit forced. It didn’t exactly feel like this was entirely due to aiming for a tight script too. At times, certain aspects of the narrative were treated almost as inconveniences and only made cameo appearances for the sake of keeping lovers of the book onside.
The legendary monstrous nature of post-disappeared Heathcliff is almost as much told as shown, which is a bit of a red flag. The passion, wildness, mischievousness etc of Cathy are attributes that are used very sparingly too; they more-or-less get Nelly to tell us about these traits and how strong they were in Cathy’s case at the end of the film. There is a fair bit of telling rather than showing. This implies a sense of inconvenience.
It is obvious that characterization could have been more expansive. It feels at times like the romance was not just a central theme, but the central theme for the film, and everything else was a bit of a tax. Indeed, Pennistone Crag for example probably defines the cultural difference between the novel and the film best of all. It takes centre-stage in the film for Romance duties between Heathcliff and Cathy as an aesthetically beautiful if somewhat cliched symbol where they meet at times of adversity. Almost comparable to George and Lennie’s private meeting destination during the climax Mice and Men (albeit a very different kind of relationship). Whereas in the novel, Pennistone has a place in its own right but is very much a minor feature; while the unfairness of society and growing hatred between numerous characters take centre stage. Pennistone Crag is hinted by Bronte to be a space where social norms can be breached. Challenging the boundaries. Pennistone is thus more successful in the film than it is in the novel. Heathcliff and Cathy spend their final moments together peacefully observing Pennistone in unison during dark evening light, just after the latter confessed that she belonged to Heathcliff and had never been anybody else’s. That isn’t too faithful to the book!
I finally got round to watching it in December 2021 after selecting it in a film adaptation module on my creative writing course. It has been available for free on Prime ever since.
I have watched the film many times now. Thirty times, maybe more. Not just because of my admiration of the story. The film is remarkably easy on the eyes and ears. Wyler and his team deserve a lot of credit for that. It is a big tick in the box; I wasn’t surprised to see it won awards for picture and cinematography.
The soundtrack and scenery both succeed in being truly captivating. I like the film’s range of music throughout. I even enjoy the imagery in the darker-shaded scenes from the opening phase when we see the dim-witted Mr Lockwood fight his way through the storm to reach Wuthering Heights to a depressed Hindley haplessly failing to shoot Heathcliff much later on. It is a genuinely intriguing and effortlessly enjoyable representation of Victorian Britain from a picture point of view. The Cinematography gets an 8/10.
Indeed, the opening scene is also very faithful to the novel. Cathy’s ghost calling for Heathcliff rounds this off.
The finest scene in my view is Heathcliff’s second return to Thrushcross Grange. He is not quite there to take over like he once promised, but nevertheless he has deeply humiliated his love-rival, Edgar Linton; invited there by the latter’s sister no less, Isabella. The woman Heathcliff eventually marries, much to the torment of Cathy who has hypocritically chosen another man by this stage.
It is clear to the audience that Heathcliff’s main two incentives are one: to arouse some attention from Cathy, and two: to stick it to Linton, a man who I actually consider one of the more redeemable characters in a story that is famously packed with unlikeable characters. His attitude towards pre-refined Heathcliff is horrendous of course, but nevertheless a realistic product of his traditional upbringing. He treats the servant, Joseph, with dignity, and is a patient and loving husband to Cathy. Speaking of which, Cathy using derogatory language towards Heatchliff is less forgivable and a hurtful betrayal.
Referring back to Heathcliff’s second return to the Grange, the filmmakers deserve a lot of credit here, as it is their own invention and a successful one at that. The kind of visible tension that is harder to create in text. While improvisation is not entirely faithful to the novel, some of which that occurs in the adaptation is successful without being an excessive romance product. This is the finest example of that.
The phase of tension between Heatchliff and Cathy when the music is being played is special. When Heathcliff, tall, strong, proud, poised, just stands and looks blankly at Cathy with a kind of elegant intimidation, the camera angle putting a neat emphasis on Heathcliff’s size and status, Cathy becoming aware of this and repeatedly attempting to keep her gaze locked away but to no avail. I think the acting of Merle Oberon, the performer for the adult version of Cathy, is fantastic during this scene. The movements and expressions within her eyeballs are terrifically real. Her performance in general stands up very well indeed; she produces phases of hysterical emotion, phases of more static insecurity, phases of cruelty which all seemed to come naturally to her. The Indian-born Oberon was well up to the task. It was not the most energetic performance you will ever see but she had enough charisma and maturity to ensure that she was capable of doing the necessary job for both the dramatic scenes and the gentler scenes. Her laid-back approach was never likely to run into allegations of being melodramatic even if Wyler didn’t always help her in this regard.
I thought the younger Cathy was very impressive too and deserves a mention; her stiff and almost-concussed reaction to her father’s death for example feels very real. Much more real than the noisier reactions you will see in many other films. She was certainly the standout of the three child performers. Hindley (Douglas Scott) and Heathcliff’s (Rex Downing) performers were merely very competent.
I found it interesting therefore that Sarita Wooton is such an obscure actress given her standout performance in the earlier exchanges, but almost not surprising. At times, less fine-tuned performers produce more realistic performances. I really loved Bjork in Dancer in the Dark and David Walliams in Gangsta Granny, both performers with different primary fields. Perhaps Wooton she had no desire for a serious long-term environment where you rehearse every single fine detail again and again and again.
I was sad to learn that Wooton passed away relatively recently at the grand old age of 90. When all I have ever seen of her is as a playful and cheeky middle-class child, it puts into perspective just how old the film really is. Downing also passed away quite recently. He made it to ninety-five.
I completely backed the decision to cut out the second half of the novel, but I think more detail of the first half of the book would have made it a better film. This was achievable through richer characterization even in the makings of a romance film which was not entirely faithful to the darker atmosphere of the novel. The atmosphere of the film is not faithful, but it is still chilling in parts, progressively in this respect, and I don’t find the romance overly forced or cringeworthy like it could easily have been. As mentioned previously, the only aspect between Heathcliff and Catherine that isn’t very faithful from a narrative structure point-of-view is the soft nature of their final encounter. There is some clunkiness in the way their connection is conveyed, but not to the extent where the love is cheesy; even if the film is quite fluffed up.
I didn’t think the supporting characters were particularly undersold.
Nellie is given a very significant role. The absence of Mr Earnshaw’s wife (I thought this was pushing it a bit further than the absence of Hindley’s wife) affords the narrator an extended role in the early stages and her relationships with both Heathcliff and Catherine are important.
Hindley’s brattish snobbish demeanour and decline are both quite key themes of the first half and second half of the film respectively.
Isabella gets a very intense scene with Cathy and although the watered-down narrative does not make it overly explicit, it is still revealed that Edgar has disowned her later on which is both brutal and faithful to the novel.
Even Heathcliff’s adoptive father, Mr Earnshaw, didn’t require too much more screentime. His warm nature and the hints of favouritism at Hindley’s expense are both made clear enough. This legacy is neatly extended by Hindley’s almost-hysterical bitterness and bullying towards Heathcliff in the aftermath of his father’s death.
Hindley’s bitterness and self-inflicted health decline are both conveyed rather well; therefore, I don’t think the presence of his wife from the book was overly important for his character, she may have been a distraction and given her fate (died whilst giving birth), he already has enough woes for a desperate decline without that. It is a film full of compelling female performances too so I don’t think this is lacking in the absence of Hindley’s wife. Geraldine Fitzgerlad’s performance as Isabella was award-winning.
The opening phase is one of the best parts of the entire film. The beautiful music suddenly substituted with quite dastardly music that compliments the diabolical situation a man has found himself in is entertaining and makes you feel relieved you aren’t in his shoes. There’s then the eerie old house with the aggressive dog and rather unwelcoming expressions on the faces of the people inside. Everything goes from soft and serene to harsh very quickly, symbolising the way readers expect a fluffy love story when they purchase Wuthering Heights, only to experience more pain and darkness second-hand than anything else.
On a more negative note, one of the best examples of the general fluffiness of the film is the way Cathy and Heathcliff actually get fairly close to going out on goodish terms, and Heathcliff only snaps at her of sorts during this attempted-tragically romantic phase after her death, demanding her to haunt him until he dies and this is a compliment anyway. At least the haunting request was thematic fidelity of sorts; two of the most legendary quotes of the book are both incorporated; this, and when Cathy tells Nellie that it would “degrade” her to marry Heathcliff; the detail of Heathcliff overhearing is also included which makes for one of Cathy’s periods of hysteria, again complimented by some memorable music.
Heathcliff sounds frustrated when he asks a terribly weak Cathy on her death bed why she killed herself, but the heartbreak in his voice overwhelms the anger. Cathy’s suicide incentive is also widely hinted to be out of heartache for Heathcliff belonging to somebody else, unlike in the book, in which the most common interpretation is punishing both him and herself. She had pleaded with her husband rather hysterically to intervene Heathcliff’s marriage plans a couple of scenes earlier, but it’s too late. The fact Cathy has consciously killed herself probably lends itself to a kind of extreme romantic drama (almost not too dissimilar to Romeo and Juliet); the suicide is more subtle in the book and Bronte’s version of the relationship ends in considerably more bitter conditions.
Wyler doesn’t quite capture the same sinister atmosphere that Bronte excels at, there is more of a tragic feeling which the book doesn’t focus on as much as the hatred it conveys. Heathcliff does actually take over Wuthering Heights towards the end of the film, but Nelly never gasps that something awful is happening with a sense of terror like she does in the novel, they just get Dr Kenneth (bigger role than he gets in the book, sharing a distinction with Pennistone Crag) to basically concede that the place is haunted and beyond his “healing powers”. Heathcliff’s negative impact on the house is another thing that feels a bit rushed. A tight script is a good fit for some narratives; I watched a much more modern film called “Wonder” where a tight script was applied very neatly. But I think Wuthering Heights could have been better if it was thirty minutes longer.
Personal film rating: 7.6/10.
