Wuthering Heights, the book, is a dark story of disturbed personalities and intergenerational cruelty in the name of thwarted passion. Wuthering Heights, the 1939 movie, is an old-fashioned silver screen love story played straight – conveniently ending halfway through Emily Brontë’s book before Heathcliff unquestionably crosses the line between “bad boy” and all-out vengeful villain.
That said, though, this adaptation by the prolific director William Wyler (Ben Hur, Mrs. Miniver) is a great film and the forgotten orphan brother among other titles in a year that produced some of the most widely recognized classics in cinema. Its competitors for Best Picture in the 12th Academy Awards included Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Wizard of Oz, and the winner, Gone With the Wind. The latter was another scenic, swooning romance about a pouty heroine, the rebellious hero who sweeps her off her feet, and the tame siblings who come between them; both were also adaptations of novels by female authors.
This version of Wuthering Heights, in fact, could only have been told in black and white – not only to maintain the stormy atmosphere (which it does masterfully), but to explore the themes as interpreted by the director and screenwriters, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. With only 104 minutes to adapt a highly nuanced classic novel and all its possible topics, this film focuses on class conflict and identity as expressed in darkness and lightness. Catherine and Heathcliff’s original home, Wuthering Heights, is always shown in a depressing shade of gray while the tame and wealthy Thrushcross Grange is always whitewashed.
Catherine’s dream about being cast from heaven is directly related in social class terms when she expresses her discontent with Wuthering Heights: “It would be heaven to escape from this disorderly and comfortless place.” She refers to Edgar and Isabella as “the Linton angels.” In another scene, Edgar reassures her that “Heaven is bounded by these four walls.” Cathy, similarly, wears gray as her true self and Heathcliff’s lover on the moors; her dress is almost always white when she associates herself with the Lintons. In the afterlife, she and Heathcliff are back in their dark gray clothes.
While the original novel leaves Heathcliff’s time away up to interpretation, William Wyler’s film explicitly states that the character returned rich from America – both as a patriotic nod and as a way of reinforcing themes of class. At the time the story takes place, the fledgeling United States was well-known for having a more flexible class system than England.
One has to remember that many of the classics were basically summer popcorn movies when they were released – this was especially true in the wake of the Great Depression when cinema was a way for people to escape and perhaps indirectly bring the questions about the nature of class and money when so much wealth and status was lost overnight. Gone With the Wind portrayed the aristocratic Southern culture where the hierarchy of race and class was justified as the natural, divine order. The film based on Margaret Mitchell’s book ends with Scarlett O’Hara surviving and taking strength in Tara, her old plantation. Wuthering Heights, on the other hand, presents social class as something unnatural and destructive, with comparisons of wealth to “heaven” being ironic. Catherine dies at the end; she and Heathcliff are presented as elemental humans who would have been happy if they had just stayed on the moors, where they are their own king and queen, away from the artificial order of Thrushcross Grange. And while Scarlett realizes that her marriage should have been more important than her overly idealized feelings for Ashley, Catherine’s forbidden passion for Heathcliff – finally fulfilled in the afterlife – is presented as more real than her mortal marriage.
Overall, the characterization shows this romanticized interpretation of the novel, glossing away any indication that the characters had other problems besides social class. Supporting characters are heavily tamed with their original quirks taken away: Nelly is soft-spoken and sentimental, unlike the novel’s original tell-it-like-it-is guardian of common sense. When Heathcliff and Cathy first see the Linton siblings, they are hosts of a polite dance party rather than immature crybabies throwing tantrums. Joseph has become nice and normal. Would-be rescuer Isabella (Geraldine Fitzgerald) is well-acted and well-interpreted, transforming from naïve beauty queen to the worn-out wife of Heathcliff. Their relationship, however, is not as abusive as in the novel – or if it is, the abuse takes place off screen. The movie goes out of its way to make sure Heathcliff isn’t too bad.
Heathcliff’s character, played by Lawrence Olivier (Rebecca, Hamlet) in an Oscar-nominated performance, has the most dramatic re-interpretation. He is much more sympathetic, especially as a child. The scene where young Heathcliff and Hindley are fighting over a horse has their roles reversed from the original novel: Hindley brattily demands to have Heathcliff’s animal, rather than the other way around. His presentation is that of an innocent who becomes vengeful and somewhat violent later on. With his puppy-eyed intensity and raw passion, it is easy to see why he was a heartthrob of his era.
Catherine, played by Merle Oberon (The Dark Angel, The Scarlet Pimpernel), is a character split between two identities. In one scene, after returning from the Lintons, she stares at her reflection in the mirror. Taking off her fancy white dress, she runs out to meet Heathcliff in her normal clothes, saying, “This is me now.”
Yet she changes back into the white dress, saying, “I have a wonderful brain. It makes me superior to myself” – even though her body language contradicts her words.
Throughout the film, she keeps waffling back and forth about her true identity. “There was a strange curse… that kept me from being myself,” she tells Edgar. “Or at least from being what I wanted to be. Living in heaven.”
“I’m not the Cathy that was,” she says to Heathcliff in her first return from the Lintons. “I’m somebody else.”
Heathcliff retorts, “Not even you, Cathy, can come between us.”
Merle Oberon brings her personal experience to Cathy’s tortured presence. Being familiar with this actress’s life story adds an extra dimension to not only analyzing but also empathizing with her performance. 1939 saw the first actor of color to win an Oscar (Hattie McDaniel in Gone With the Wind), but the best opportunities and starring roles were reserved almost exclusively for white actors. Oberon was pressured to hide her biracial heritage, claiming Australia rather than India as her birthplace. Some of the stories include that she claimed her mother was her housemaid, and that a rich boyfriend broke up with her upon realizing she was half Indian. Color photographs of her later in life show her real skin tone, but the lighting and makeup of old movies like Wuthering Heights show her to be almost literally white.
The film’s recognition as a classic continues to have a mixed legacy among modern critics. In 1998, the American Film Institute included Wuthering Heights in its list of Top 100 movies; however, it was removed from the updated list in 2007. Even so, during that same year, the film was finally inducted into the National Film Registry for preservation. Wilder’s version of Wuthering Heights is not necessarily the best adaptation – critics often point to surrealist Luis Buñuel’s Abismos de Pasion as both the better film and the better representation of the book itself. But while Buñuel’s 1954 version is hard to find, the 1939 Wuthering Heights is available to watch for free on Hulu. Film buffs and Brontë fans alike would find it worth checking out.
Sources:
American Film Institute
Hulu (ww.hulu.com)
Internet Movie Database
National Film Registry Preservation Board
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