Wuthering Heights (1970)

Between the earliest adaptations and the more contemporary innovations, I realized my list didn’t include any films between the 1950s and 1980s. I also realized I needed one more Wuthering Heights adaptation to complete my list. So, I confess I picked this one, directed by Robert Fuest and adapted by Patrick Tilley, as an afterthought; the token representative of four whole decades of cinema. To be fair to myself, though, the most well-known adaptations are either really old or fairly recent and thus easy to find. I wanted to see Abismos de Pasion (1954) and Arashi Ga Oka (1988), but they weren’t on Netflix… not even on Hulu or YouTube.

But even though I picked this one as an afterthought, I really liked it. Among the five Wuthering Heights movies, this is one of the two that I would watch again… if nothing else, because I love the “hippie” look. On every other scene, my brain was screaming, “I want that outfit!!!” The costume design in period pieces is never far removed from the time the movie is actually made – so Heathcliff wears a leather vest like he is on his way to Woodstock or something, Catherine has a flower in her hair and the most adorable peasant blouses, and Edgar (in one of his more sympathetic portrayals) totally looks like David Frost from the recent Watergate movie Frost/Nixon. And I loved Michael Legrand’s Golden Globe-nominated score – from the 60’s-style flute riffs to the complete lack of music in some of the most intense scenes, a la Bonnie and Clyde.

Another pleasant surprise was the cinematography. After watching the effective use of black and white in the 1939 version compared to the flat lighting in the too-bright 2009 version, I wondered if it was even possible to capture the feeling of Wuthering Heights in color. I loved this film’s emphasis on Catherine and Heathcliff’s connection to nature – or maybe, again, I’m just a sucker for the back-to-the-land hippie aesthetic. One scene completely devoid of dialogue has Catherine meeting Heathcliff in the country. He does not know how to react, but they end up rolling in the greenery like flower children. The camera turns up-side down with them, and the framing behind long grasses and low leaves is actually quite beautiful.

Following the example of the 1939 version and most other adaptations, this Wuthering Heights ends halfway through the book. This appears to be a common practice in cinema adaptations – not only because a movie has two hours (give or take) to adapt a lot of material, but because killing one of the two main characters halfway through the script would go against the general rules of plot structure that audiences expect.

The movie actually begins with Catherine’s death; almost all the rest is told in flashback. The opening funeral scene, where the lone Heathcliff looks down in the distance to the other characters lowering the coffin, is no spoiler for anyone who is even remotely familiar with the original story. However, it does serve to set the tone that Heathcliff and Cathy’s romance is doomed from the start.

A huge aspect of this ill-fated romance is the fairly explicit interpretation that Catherine and Heathcliff are half-siblings. This is the subtext of Emily Brontë’s novel; many readers choose to believe that Mr. Earnshaw just happened to make frequent trips to Liverpool and just happened to pick up a random orphan there. The character of Mrs. Earnshaw herself derides this notion; she knows what is going on behind her back. She tells the young Hindley (who looks and acts like a stoner here) that he is “the son of this house.” Nelly’s voiceover explains Hindley was lonely after his mother died, taking her resentment on himself. It is the basis of Hindley and Heathcliff’s rivalry but never mentioned again. Yet the fact that Catherine and Heathcliff even grew up together, calling the same man “Father,” should make their relationship at least as strange and incestuous as the adopted siblings in The Royal Tenenbaums.

An interesting note about this film is its overlap with the 1983 BBC miniseries adaptation of Jane Eyre. They share two actors; Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff and Rochester, respectively, and Judy Cornwell as Nelly and Mrs. Reed.

Fuest and Tilley’s Wuthering Heights succeeds in what other film adaptations don’t: presenting Nelly as a distinct personality with her own goals and being the hero of her own story, rather than as a background fixture or a plot device. Judy Cornwell’s Nelly is young and beautiful and passionate in her own right; she only lacks social opportunities and class standing. An unspoken subplot has Nelly in unrequited love for Hindley (who clearly does not deserve her anyway), which perhaps gives her a special sympathy for Heathcliff’s situation. This is an example of a film adapting a book well even while technically contradicting it: while there was no such subplot in Emily Brontë’s novel, it presents Nelly as she is in the book: snarky and colorful and anything but nondescript.

Timothy Dalton makes a great Heathcliff with his piercing eyes and sullen, uncultivated demeanor. When he returns with his rich velvet makeover and superficially cultured demeanor, he is less impressive than slightly awkward and visibly uncomfortable in his own skin. While he starred in a variety of period pieces, Dalton is best known as one of the James Bond actors. Even though he did not accept that role until the late 1980s, EON Productions approached him as early as 1968 to replace Sean Connery. Watching the film, it is easy to see why they sought after him: he is the cold-blooded lover, rough on the women – but they like him for it. The film’s beautiful and spoiled Isabella slaps him when he tries to get her to bed, but like a typical Bond girl, she does not resist for long. Edgar runs around with a gun, and one scene where Heathcliff is thrown out of the house in a musical flourish seems prophetic of exploitation films. Silliness aside, Dalton’s green eyes make the character, and an extreme close-up on his face leads to an ending that shoots down the possibility of the disturbing second half of the book from happening after the movie is over.

I have yet to see a Wuthering Heights adaptation that comes anywhere close to visually capturing the raw insanity, wildness, and random pathology – not just the passion and romance – of the original novel. Robert Fuest’s Wuthering Heights has its share of flaws, but its striking camera angles, dynamic score, and mentally unbalanced Heathcliff create an interesting cinematic interpretation.