Wuthering Heights

Plot synopsis:
=== Opening (Chapters 1 to 3) ===
In 1801, Lockwood, a wealthy young man from the South of England who is seeking peace and recuperation, rents Thrushcross Grange in Yorkshire. He visits his landlord, Heathcliff, who lives in a remote moorland farmhouse, Wuthering Heights. There Lockwood finds an odd assemblage: Heathcliff seems to be a gentleman, but his manners are uncouth; the reserved mistress of the house is in her mid-teens; and a young man who seems to be a member of the family, yet dresses and speaks as if he is a servant.
Snowed in, Lockwood is grudgingly allowed to stay and is shown to a bedchamber where he notices books and graffiti left by a former inhabitant named Catherine. He falls asleep and has a nightmare in which he sees the ghostly Catherine trying to enter through the window. He cries out in fear, rousing Heathcliff, who rushes into the room. Lockwood is convinced that what he saw was real. Heathcliff, believing Lockwood to be right, examines the window and opens it, hoping to allow Catherine's spirit to enter. When nothing happens, Heathcliff shows Lockwood to his own bedroom and returns to keep watch at the window.
At sunrise, Heathcliff escorts Lockwood back to Thrushcross Grange. Lockwood asks the housekeeper, Nelly Dean, about the family at Wuthering Heights, and she tells him the tale.
=== Heathcliff's childhood (Chapters 4 to 17) ===
Thirty years earlier, the owner of Wuthering Heights is Mr. Earnshaw, who lives with his son Hindley and younger daughter Catherine. On a trip to Liverpool, Earnshaw encounters a homeless boy, described as a "dark-skinned gypsy in aspect". He adopts the boy and names him Heathcliff. Hindley feels that Heathcliff has supplanted him in his father's affections and becomes bitterly jealous. Catherine and Heathcliff become friends and spend hours each day playing on the moors. They grow close.
Hindley is sent to college. Three years later Earnshaw dies and Hindley becomes the landowner; he is now master of Wuthering Heights. He returns to live there with his new wife, Frances. He allows Heathcliff to stay but only as a servant, and regularly mistreats him.
A few months after Hindley's return, Heathcliff and Catherine walk to Thrushcross Grange to spy on Edgar and Isabella Linton, who live there. After being discovered they try to run away but are caught. Catherine is injured by the Lintons' dog and taken into the house to recuperate, while Heathcliff is sent home. Catherine stays with the Lintons. The Lintons are landed gentry and Catherine is influenced by their fine appearance and genteel manners. When she returns to Wuthering Heights her appearance and manners are more ladylike, and she laughs at Heathcliff's unkempt appearance. The next day, knowing that the Lintons are to visit, Heathcliff, upon Nelly's advice, tries to dress up, in an effort to impress Catherine, but he and Edgar Linton get into an argument and Hindley humiliates Heathcliff by locking him in the attic. Catherine tries to comfort Heathcliff, but he vows revenge on Hindley.
The following year, Frances Earnshaw gives birth to a son, named Hareton, but she dies a few months later. Hindley descends into drunkenness. Two more years pass, and Catherine and Edgar Linton become friends, while she becomes more distant from Heathcliff. Edgar visits Catherine while Hindley is away and they declare themselves lovers soon afterwards.
Catherine confesses to Nelly that Edgar has proposed marriage and she has accepted, although her love for Edgar is not comparable to her love for Heathcliff, whom she cannot marry because of his low social status and lack of education. She hopes to use her position as Edgar's wife to raise Heathcliff's standing. Heathcliff overhears her say that it would "degrade" her to marry him (but not how much she loves him), and he runs away and disappears without a trace. Distraught over Heathcliff's departure, Catherine makes herself ill. Nelly and Edgar begin to pander to her every whim to prevent her from becoming ill again.
Three years pass. Edgar and Catherine marry and go to live together at Thrushcross Grange, where Catherine enjoys being "lady of the manor". Six months later, Heathcliff returns, now a wealthy gentleman. Catherine is delighted, but Edgar is not. Edgar's sister, Isabella, soon falls in love with Heathcliff, who despises her, but encourages the infatuation as a means of revenge. One day, he embraces Isabella, leading to an argument with Edgar. Upset, Catherine locks herself in her room and begins to make herself ill again.
Heathcliff takes up residence at Wuthering Heights and spends his time gambling with Hindley and teaching Hareton bad habits. Hindley dissipates his wealth and mortgages the farmhouse to Heathcliff to pay his debts. Heathcliff elopes with Isabella Linton. Two months after their elopement, they return to Wuthering Heights, where Heathcliff hears that Catherine is dying. With Nelly's help, he visits Cathy secretly. However, Catherine is pregnant. The following day, she gives birth to a daughter, Cathy, shortly before dying.
After Catherine's funeral, Isabella confides in Nelly, laughing as she tells Nelly how glad she is that Cathy died and that she has left Heathcliff. Rejected shelter by Edgar, Isabella eventually finds refuge in the South of England and gives birth to a son, Linton. Hindley dies six months after Catherine, and Heathcliff thus finds himself master of Wuthering Heights.
=== Heathcliff's maturity (Chapters 18 to 31) ===
Twelve years pass. Catherine's daughter Cathy has become a beautiful, high-spirited girl. Edgar learns that his sister Isabella is dying, so he leaves to retrieve her son Linton in order to adopt and educate him. Cathy, who has rarely left home, takes advantage of her father's absence to venture further afield. She rides over the moors to Wuthering Heights and discovers that she has not one but two cousins: Hareton, in addition to Linton. She also lets it be known that her father has gone to fetch Linton. When Edgar returns with Linton, a weak and sickly boy, Heathcliff insists that he live at Wuthering Heights.
Three years pass. Walking on the moors, Nelly and Cathy encounter Heathcliff, who takes them to Wuthering Heights to see Linton and Hareton. Heathcliff hopes that Linton and Cathy will marry, so that Linton will become the heir to Thrushcross Grange. Linton and Cathy begin a secret friendship, echoing the childhood friendship between their respective parents, Heathcliff and Catherine.
The following year, Edgar becomes very ill and takes a turn for the worse while Nelly and Cathy are out on the moors, where Heathcliff and Linton trick them into entering Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff keeps them captive to enable the marriage of Cathy and Linton to take place. After five days, Nelly is released and later, with Linton's help, Cathy escapes. She returns to the Grange to see her father shortly before he dies.
Now master of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, Cathy's father-in-law, Heathcliff, insists on her returning to live at Wuthering Heights. Soon after she arrives Linton dies. Hareton tries to be kind to Cathy, but she withdraws from the world.
At this point, Nelly's tale catches up to the present day (1801). Time passes and, after being ill for a period, Lockwood grows tired of the moors and informs Heathcliff that he will be leaving Thrushcross Grange.
=== Ending (Chapters 32 to 34) ===
Eight months later, Lockwood returns to the area by chance. Given that his tenancy at Thrushcross Grange is still valid, he decides to stay there again. He finds Nelly living at Wuthering Heights and enquires what has happened since he left. She explains that she moved to Wuthering Heights to replace the housekeeper, Zillah, who had left.
Hareton has an accident and is confined to the farmhouse. During his convalescence, he and Cathy overcome their mutual antipathy and become close. While their friendship develops, Heathcliff begins to act strangely and has visions of Catherine. He stops eating and, after four days, is found dead in Catherine's old room. He is buried next to Catherine.
Lockwood learns that Hareton and Cathy plan to marry on New Year's Day. As he gets ready to leave, he passes the graves of Catherine, Edgar, and Heathcliff and pauses to contemplate the quiet of the moors.

Tags: tragedy, revenge, romantic, flashback

Review:
Director William Wyler and star Laurence Olivier bring to life the atmosphere and most important characters of a classic novel in "Wuthering Heights".
The other main strength of the film is its realization of the main settings, which are almost as important to the story as the characters are: once-fine but now gloomy and declining Wuthering Heights; the pleasant but vapid Thrushcross Grange, home of the Linton family; and especially the wild, mysterious Yorkshire moors, the only place where Heathcliff and Cathy are ever really happy.
As many have noted, the 1939 adaptation of "Wuthering Heights" is, more or less, merely the first volume of Emily Bronte's beautifully and powerfully written classic -- focusing less on the detail of Heathcliff's wrath post Cathy's death, but moreso on the sheer complexity of Heathcliff and Cathy's relationship (the scenes at Penniston Crag of them among the moors and heather are not in the book because Bronte had to stick to Ellen's point of view -- it was nice that we could finally have an in-depth look at the tumultuous relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff).
Merle Oberon is remarkable as Cathy -- a much more dark and exoctic beauty than Isabella whose good looks are very wholesome and pure (perhaps to match the darkness of the gypsy stable-boy Heathcliff), and capturing the duality of personality that is Catherine Earnshaw -- part of her wanting to love a wild, evil, wicked stable boy...
(I do wish they would have left in the part of the book where she refuses to eat and begins hallucinating -- Oberon could have performed it so well.) Also to be noted are the stunning performances of David Niven and Gerladine Fitzgerald as the long-suffering Edgar and Isabella Linton (respectively), their lives made miserable by Cathy's selfishness, vanity and greed to be part of a higher way of living, and by Heathcliff's undying love for Catherine and his course of revenge and destruction.
Cathy was right when she said that she and Heathcliff's souls were made of the same basic fiber -- they were both greedy and selfish (he wanted her passion for him to be as deep as his passion for her and she wanted and if he couldn't have it, no one else deserved to have it, and God forbid those around him feel any kind of love, compassion or humanity; and she didn't even really know what she wanted, except to be part of the upper crust and to rise above what she had lived through when Hindley became master of their house) and because of that, their love could have never meant anything BUT tragedy.
Ms. Oberon had a fantastic presence, which translated in probably her best work in films.The dashingly handsome Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff, creates the right chemistry against Ms. Oberon's Cathy.
His Heathcliff shows a mean streak, but over all, Olivier gives an impressive performance.David Niven is excellent as Edgar Linton, the man who wins Cathy's heart with his kindness.
Laurence Olivier, never a great success in films prior to this, gives a brutally honest account of everything Bronte's Heathcliff should be: proud, bold, vengeful & darkly brooding -a tortured soul in general.
This is a beautifully filmed movie acted beautifully by two very beautiful leads, Merle Oberon and Lawrence Olivier, and some very fine supporting actors, in particular Flora Robson as Ellen.
She was one great actress.) But none of this beauty disguises the fact that it is the story of two very selfish and at times even hateful young people, Cathy and Heathcliff.
Unquestionably Merle Oberon's selfish, conflicted Cathy is her best work and she's matched every step of the way by Olivier, perhaps at the peak of his attractiveness, who also gives one of his best performances as the tormented Heathcliff.
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.
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.
The controversial decision to miss out almost the entire second half of the book allowed the filmmakers to concentrate on the Heathcliff/Cathy love story, and Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon both have incredible chemistry and strengh in their performances.
Olivier is impressive delivering some of Bronte's lines, of which there are a surprising amount, and the film does follow the book's plot very closely, it just tones down the darkness.There are many superbly done sequences- the incredibly atmospheric opening where a traveller arrives at Heathcliff's house, all the scenes on the moors, Cathy's speech to Nelly "I AM Heathcliff", and of course, more than any other scene, the death of Cathy.
In the murky and isolated Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff grows up along with his foster brothers, Cathy(Merle Oberon), his soul-mate, and Hindley(Hugh Williams), furthermore are the servants(Flora Robson, Leo G.
Laurence Olivier credits Wuthering Heights as the picture which taught him to act for the screen, and it was director William Wyler who brought him to come down to earth.A story goes that Wyler invited him round for dinner one evening after a particularly tense week of filming.
Emily Bronte's massive Gothic novel becomes a rich romance in this 1939 adaptation starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.Although this film uses only about half the novel it's a beautiful and lush work in its own right.
I have to confess that l expected more from this first and classic novel adaptation,l'd watched the 1992's version and rated 7/10 and hoping to see a strong and powerful early version,but still finding it great but no more than 8/10,the movie don't has a rational line of thinking,didn't explain an abrupt changing of Heathcliff,what's really happened in missing years,Cathy actually has a double personality, in fact he don't know what really want....and have a mystic side,a haunted side of this strange love story as show in the end,l really need to see one more time to make a real statement...it's already worked with others movies....for while 8/10 only!!
Olivier is wild fury, he brings his character alive and a style of acting that to many would had been alien outside of gangster films of the 1930s.This version of Wuthering Heights only adapts the first half of the book.
I first saw this film back in 1965 when i was still not in my teens and it was already a famous classic.Recently i saw it again and am amazed at the passionate acting of Olivier and Merle Oberon who bring the essence of the novel in their characters.Visually it is very beautiful though having seen the actual Yorkshire Moors i believe it would having been fantastic had the film been shot there.The music is superb and the rest of the cast simply splendid.There have been many up-shoots of this story but this film is a rare example of when everything concerned with a film clicks.The are several goofs of course but the black and white photography and the haunting music put one off these.Nothing reflects the whole novel in perspective then the famous lines Olivier says when the heroine is dead.Romance never had it so good!.
Heathcliff (Olivier) shares a passionate friendship with Catherine (Oberon) and over the years her social class threatens her relationship with her childhood friend, who is now the families' servant.Based on Emily Bronte's much praised novel William Wyler's picture, now over 70 years old, takes on the romantic side of the dramatic social style love of Heathcliff and Catherine, much to the film's success it uses the love as a way to project its power of time and place to make it entertaining for viewers.Used in black and white, we can feel the age of the time and be associated with the then current social classes and using that to tell a romantic story makes the film excellent viewing.Readers of the novel may feel slightly doubtful by this film's more focused romance rather than the dramatic political styling of the novel.
After viewing this in rehearsal for a small theatrical production, it seems a reading would be very enjoyable and interesting to come up with a unique opinion.As a film the direction is handled with standard ease by Wyler who uses many a close shot and opens with a glorious stormy setting as a man makes his way into Heathcliff's current place of residence.Olivier strikes an instant impression as an emotionless stereotyped male and when the film diverts us to the past we see reason for his current misery and appearance.
The party at Wuthering Heights is used to emphasise the strong feelings of independent minds in love.Whilst many romantic films these days rely on pure star power to pull in viewing figures, this has the power to intrigue people for its ability to confront the strong nature of love against the manipulation of surrounding elements, including social elements and family.Where as the finale may seem cheesy to some and there may have been more musical intention this is a resounding romance that benefits from the use of its ideas and has made me interested to read the novel..
One of the reasons that 1939 was a "magic year" in Hollywood was because of "Wuthering Heights," carefully brought to the screen by William Wyler as director, Charles MacArthur as writer, and its brilliant cast: Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Flora Robson, Hugh Williams and Donald Crisp.Like "Gone with the Wind," characters and story elements of Bronte's novel are omitted in order to make it filmable - Hindley's entire family, for instance, but the film remains rich in substance, its conflicted and complicated characters brought vividly to life.Obviously, there's no point in repeating the story, but it's a story that can be dissected from several angles.
Romantic, passionate, angry, bitter, brooding - Olivier embodies all of this.As Cathy, Oberon is impossibly beautiful, and she's superb as a woman who wants the high a life of wealth and class and hates herself for wanting Heathcliff, too.
This story has been filmed many times and probably in a way that is more faithful to the novel, but Olivier and Oberon are a hard act to follow and remain, for this writer anyway, the definitive Heathcliff and Cathy..
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.
Brooding and tempestuous, William Wyler's 1939 version of Emily Brontë's only novel, "Wuthering Heights", is a masterwork of doomed love, conflicting passions, and unbridled revenge, all set in a romantic, haunted vision of the Yorkshire moors.
After years on the London stage and in British films, Laurence Olivier was finally introduced to Hollywood with his surly performance as Heathcliff, the stable boy locked in destructive thrall with a country squire's daughter, Cathy.
What Olivier does convey particularly well is the heroic tragedy of Heathcliff, as he renounces any power that denies his love with a turbulent, almost demonic sense of yearning.A beautiful woman with hidden half-caste origins, Merle Oberon plays the capricious Cathy to the best of her limited capabilities.
A young and pretty Geraldine Fitzgerald plays Isabella, Cathy's sister-in-law and Heathcliff's eventual wife, as the silly, determined romantic she is, and David Niven looks understandably puzzled most of the time as the put-upon Edgar Linton.
It's the spellbinding on-screen adaptation of a woman's only novel and one of the most iconic literature romances.It's the tormented and tormenting tale of a doomed love inspiring one of the greatest movies of 1939.And it stars one half of the Laurence Olivier - Vivien Leigh couple, but it is NOT "Gone with the Wind".It was certainly in Hollywood cards that the atmospheric black-and-white "Wuthering Heights", as sweet as a strong espresso, would forever be overshadowed by the Technicolor orgy of autumnal bonfires and taffetas dresses from the Best Picture winner of the year.
This is not to lower the level of cinematic excellence reached in these "Wuthering Heights" but while the film is a masterpiece of Gothic romance thanks to its haunting cinematography and the intensity of Laurence Olivier's performance, love orbits the iconic couple in a way that causes so much histrionic pain and theatrical angerthat the childhood scenes felt more genuine.
A truncated screen adaptation of Emily Bronté's magnum opus, William Wyler's WUTHERING HEIGHTS concentrates on the torrid, toxic, fire and brimstone of Cathy and Heathcliff's love tangle within an audience-friendly running time (103 minutes) and squarely omits all the latter-half chapters of the novel.
Wonderful Golden Age Hollywood treatment of Emily Bronte's immortal novel, you know it's going to be good just from the initial titles as names like Laurence Olivier, Flora Robson, William Wyler, Greg Toland and many other greats pass by.
The evocation of place is superbly realised so that you never doubt you're in the bleakly beautiful Yorkshire landscape which forms such an evocative background to events as they play out on the screenThe film retains the basic framework of the book with the traveller's dead-of-winter visit to an embittered Heathcliffe's house leading to Flora Robson's maid flash-backing us into the main story of the doomed, tragic love between childhood sweethearts Heathcliffe and Cathy as they push and pull themselves into adulthood, collaterally damaging different members of the neighbouring rich Linton family who fall into their orbit.For me the best acting was actually by Dame Flora Robson as the faithful retainer Mary who wants the best for both of her charges, but who has her loyalties tested in their on-off-on love-hate relationship.
I've seen this twice now, and while the 2nd viewing didn't quite hold up since the first (I seemed to be young and naive during those days lol) I enjoyed the film still, even though Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon play two people destined to destroy each other to prove how much they love each other!
Starting from the facts that William Wyler was a terrific director and Lawrence Olivier a wonderful actor (better in drama than on screen but anyway), this films is really disappointing when you watch it afer having read and loved the novel.The storyline lacks all the passion, the fury, the moral ambiguity, the complexity and poetic wilderness of its original source; Olivier turns out to be far too refined and "British" to be a convincing Heathcliff and the lack of commitment of the adaptators towards the gothic masterpiece is quite irritating.Not being totally satisfactory either, I consider the 1992 adaptation of the novel much more faithful to the spirit of the book.
I love it when Heathcliff tells Hindley what he really is: a coward."Wuthering Heights" is a great movie based on a wonderful book.
1939 period drama based on Emily Bronte's classic novel which tells the tragic tale of unfortunate lovers Heathcliff (Laurence Olivier) and Cathy (Merle Oberon) who, despite their strong love for one another are forced by social circumstances to forever be apart.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS followed Samuel Goldwyn's earlier hit that year THE HURRICANE also becoming a classic of its time.Directed by William Wyler and starring along with Olivier, were Merle Oberon [probably her best and most famous role as Cathy] Donald Crisp, Flora Robson, Cecil Kellaway, Geraldine Fitzgerald and David Niven, this was well acted and directed by Wyler.
I have always found Emily Bronte's Gothic novel truly fascinating but somewhat depressing.All the more reason to respect and admire William Wyler's ability to successfully transpose this famous work to the screen.Good directors know their audience and Wyler allows us to be mesmerized by the protagonists while keeping a firm grip on reality.Cathy is willful and petulant and Merle Oberon,alluring rather than beautiful,is perfectly cast.For my taste,Laurence Olivier (eight years away from his knighthood) IS Heathcliff.With his handsome,magnetic presence and looking taller in long coat and high boots,his performance lingers in the memory.The character of Isabella,beautifully played by Geraldine Fitzgerald,provides the key to the two leads as she is revealed as nothing more than a pawn in Heathcliff's plan to destroy Cathy and Edgar.Cathy's confrontation scene,after the ball,reveals all we need to know about her true nature.Desperately claiming that she is the one Heathcliff is in love with,she incites Isabella to reply: "You are vain and insufferable".
William Wyler's version of the Bronte classic has its awkward moments: Merle Oberon overacts fearfully as Cathy, while Olivier is sometimes a little too mannered as Heathcliff.
"Wuthering Heights" tells the story of former street urchin Heathcliff (Laurence Olivier) and aristocrat Cathy (Merle Oberon), and their forbidden love affair on an estate in the English moors in the 1800s.
Wuthering Heights is one of my favorite films, and perfectly done, except for the very final shot which not only Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier but also William Wyler boycotted.
Wyler faced this with Wuthering Heights and he picked out the romance of Cathy and Heathcliff as the focus of the story and omitted the second half of the book.
A servant in the house of Wuthering Heights tells a traveler the unfortunate tale of lovers Cathy (Merle Oberon) and Heathcliff (Laurence Olivier).The 1940 Academy Award for Best Cinematography, black-and-white category, was awarded to Gregg Toland for his work.
I began watching the main characters played by Sir Lawrence Olivier as Heathcliff and Merle Oberon as Cathy and figured it was just one of those old English movies (but made in the Hollywood) and black and white at that but I decided to watch it anyway.
I have watched this version of Wuthering Heights many times,(probably 40 or 50).There is something about the tragic romance that makes me sad, yet I love the story line.