Fri 4 Sep 2009
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1954).
Posted by Steve under Films: Drama/Romance , Reviews[3] Comments
WUTHERING HEIGHTS. 1954. Originally released as Abismos de pasión. Irasema Dilián, Jorge Mistral, Lilia Prado, Ernesto Alonso, Francisco Reiguera, Hortensia Santoveña, Jaime González Quiñones, Luis Aceves Castañeda. Based on the novel by Emily Brontë. Director: Luis Buñuel.
I’ve seen three films of Wuthering Heights and they all cut out the last hundred pages of the book
Q: The last hundred pages? How big a book is it?
A: Oh, about 250 pages.
Q: And they cut out the last hundred?
A: Right.
Q: Damn!
A: Damn indeed, as you so aptly put it.
Luis Buñuel’s 1954 film goes them one better by also cutting out the first thirty pages. Assuming one has maybe a passing acquaintance with the classics, he kicks things off with Heathcliff’s return and his pursuit of the married Cathy — or failing that, her sister-in-law — to work his nasty love/revenge, all this set in contemporary Mexico.
On the surface that might seem a brutal travesty of Emily Brontë’s novel, but Buñuel gives it a sensitivity and passion wholly suited to the subject. His Heathcliff bristles with Byronic angst, played effectively against a compulsively-impulsive Catherine whose fiery Latin temperament suits the character perfectly, and the Mexican landscape somehow evokes the spirit of the lonely moors… perhaps something to do with the Moorish architecture, but I may have my moors mixed.
Whatever the case, Buñuel conjures up Brontë’s characters and atmosphere perfectly, and when he tacks on his own original ending, it seems perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the thing … and memorably creepy in its own way.
Anyway, watching this led me to pick up the book again for the first time since high school (I remember thinking there weren’t enough explosions in it.) and, though Emily hardly needs endorsement from the likes of me, I found it an incredibly good bit of writing.
The main characters are all surly, short-sighted and self-absorbed, but somehow they gain our sympathy and never lose our interest. And those last hundred pages…
I can only say that the ending of this book, while hardly cinematic, is one of the best things I’ve read this year.
September 5th, 2009 at 12:35 am
“the ending of this book, while hardly cinematic…”
Well, there is the nail head squarely struck. Much as we love certain books some things don’t translate to the screen, and I don’t think any of the better Wuthering Heights films would really benefit from the addition of those last one hundred pages.
Even Gone With the Wind left out of couple of Scarlett’s children, and Lord of the Rings had to skip the whole beloved Tom Bombadill section.
The Bunuel film is a good one though, and proof how universal a great story is.
September 6th, 2009 at 11:11 am
The second half of Wuthering Heights is very interesting.
From my web site article on Emily Brontë:
Brontë wrote a fairly large volume of poetry, which mark her as one of the great English poets. Unfortunately this book is not read as much today as it should be.
Influences on Emily Jane Brontë’s poetry include Isaac Watts. His prosody seems similar to hers, and the mystical, visionary quality of his work also is related.
In prose fiction, Horace Walpole seems the dominant influence. His novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), was the first gothic novel, and is still very good reading. Brontë and Walpole’s storytelling styles are similar. Each focuses on characters obsessed with certain beliefs, and absolutely ruthless in carrying them out. Each unfolds a complex plot. The unfolding is done with remarkable logic, as if the author were proving a theorem in mathematics. The relationships between the characters form a complex pattern, a pattern woven into the plot structure.
Philosophically, Percy Bysse Shelley seems to be an influence. Heathcliff’s rise seems to be an allegory of what would happen if the lower classes rose up with violence. Heathcliff turns Wuthering Heights into what seems to us, in the twentieth century, to be a foreshadowing of the modern totalitarian state. Later, in the sceond half of the novel, his son rises through education, with happier results. Brontë seems to be embracing education as the right way to solve the injustices meted out to the lower classes. The ideology here, warning against the negative consequences of violent revolt, seems similar to Shelley’s philosophy of non-violence. Shelley believed that violence in service of “noble” ends, was worse than violence used to support tyranny.
September 6th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Excellent summary of Wuthering Heights and its importance as a novel, but I think those things point out why much of the second half of the book is left out in film adaptations. They are two different arts, and not always fully compatible. However, the recent Masterpiece Theater adaptation of the book did follow it fairly closely, and I couldn’t help but think in doing so diluted some of the screen impact we recall from other adaptations.