I was never a particular fan of "Wuthering Heights" the novel, so I thought I might enjoy this film simply as a Hollywood melodrama in its own right.
And indeed at the beginning it looks quite promising; I hadn't realised that it actually contained mordant wit, capable of raising a laugh from the audience. There's a frequent sense of compression, as if sizeable periods of time are being skated over behind the scenes, but with any literary property this is probably inevitable. Accents are a bit wobbly (I could swear the Yorkshire characters had switched into Scots at one point by the end of the film, while the child actors are pure American) and the outdoor close-ups are marred by the obvious painted backdrops -- all too distracting, when you've once noticed that the heather is billowing in the foreground yet the sky is frozen in place! I find the whole 'castle' conceit hard to swallow and the opening special-effects snowstorm more than a little overdone, but otherwise the film works for me fairly well in its first half.
For all the talk about Laurence Olivier, this picture strikes me as basically a star vehicle for Merle Oberon with the male actors in support. My main trouble with this is that I don't find Cathy a particularly appealing character; while she is presumably intended to be arbitrary and wilful, I only find Miss Oberon's rendition of the girl rings true when she is flying out in spitfire rage at one or another of her unfortunate fellow-characters. Her loving turns are harder to swallow -- I find it hard to believe that this Cathy ever really cared for anyone other than herself. Olivier's acting is by and large fine, but the narrative impetus needed to sustain this level of plot melodrama tends to sag, leaving him with impossibly fraught lines to deliver.
In the second half things seemed to go steadily downhill, culminating in a deeply unconvincing 'happy ending'. For some reason, Heathcliff's final appearance didn't sustain the power and menace of the same character in the opening scenario, while the deathbed sequence left me stone cold, not aided by yet another case of conveniently-timed and radiantly symptomless Hollywood illness. To be fair, I'm afraid I couldn't get David Niven's irreverent anecdote about nasal discharge during this scene ('"How horrid!" shrieked the corpse, and shot out of bed') out of my head...
He had every reason to look back on the film without affection: the role of Edgar is certainly a thankless one, since the character seems to be used as an arbitrary plot lever. One moment he is playing the Hollywood notion of the Wicked Squire, the next moment he is bestowing bloodless caresses on Cathy without conviction (and without receiving any apparent encouragement). Then he is suddenly the Dictatorial Brother when it suits the plot... and yet mysteriously fails to react at all to Heathcliff's presence in his wife's bedroom.
The role written for Isabella Linton is a better one, and the conflict between her and Cathy was the only part of the second half that carried any emotional charge for me. Again, the storyline is so compressed that we never see any lover-like scenes take place between her and Heathcliff and have to take her word for it -- adding an additional unintended frisson, since we can't tell from this if she is deluding herself or indeed just taunting her sister-in-law! The supposed erotic charge between Heathcliff and Cathy, on the other hand, more or less has to be taken as written. I have trouble with this throughout the film (as I said above, the two are most credible as passionate lovers only when quarrelling violently) and I found their scenes together in the second half even less inspiring. This Cathy doesn't come across as having any particular attachment to the moors, being more interested in parties and fashion than 'sleeping under haystacks' with her lover; it is perhaps symptomatic that for an inherent love of the high places is substituted a fantasy of herself as Queen of a pretend castle there.
In the last analysis, despite having no attachment to the original source, after viewing this film I was left with the feeling that it isn't really satisfactory as a 'Hollywood' production either. Both as an adaptation and as a drama I would recommend the BBC TV broadcast version of the 1960s; to the best of my recall it doesn't cover the 'second generation' either, the budget is clearly far lower and it is basically a recreation of a studio-bound live broadcast, but it has a power and a coherency (and, I would guess, an understanding of its setting and period) that I find lacking here.
And indeed at the beginning it looks quite promising; I hadn't realised that it actually contained mordant wit, capable of raising a laugh from the audience. There's a frequent sense of compression, as if sizeable periods of time are being skated over behind the scenes, but with any literary property this is probably inevitable. Accents are a bit wobbly (I could swear the Yorkshire characters had switched into Scots at one point by the end of the film, while the child actors are pure American) and the outdoor close-ups are marred by the obvious painted backdrops -- all too distracting, when you've once noticed that the heather is billowing in the foreground yet the sky is frozen in place! I find the whole 'castle' conceit hard to swallow and the opening special-effects snowstorm more than a little overdone, but otherwise the film works for me fairly well in its first half.
For all the talk about Laurence Olivier, this picture strikes me as basically a star vehicle for Merle Oberon with the male actors in support. My main trouble with this is that I don't find Cathy a particularly appealing character; while she is presumably intended to be arbitrary and wilful, I only find Miss Oberon's rendition of the girl rings true when she is flying out in spitfire rage at one or another of her unfortunate fellow-characters. Her loving turns are harder to swallow -- I find it hard to believe that this Cathy ever really cared for anyone other than herself. Olivier's acting is by and large fine, but the narrative impetus needed to sustain this level of plot melodrama tends to sag, leaving him with impossibly fraught lines to deliver.
In the second half things seemed to go steadily downhill, culminating in a deeply unconvincing 'happy ending'. For some reason, Heathcliff's final appearance didn't sustain the power and menace of the same character in the opening scenario, while the deathbed sequence left me stone cold, not aided by yet another case of conveniently-timed and radiantly symptomless Hollywood illness. To be fair, I'm afraid I couldn't get David Niven's irreverent anecdote about nasal discharge during this scene ('"How horrid!" shrieked the corpse, and shot out of bed') out of my head...
He had every reason to look back on the film without affection: the role of Edgar is certainly a thankless one, since the character seems to be used as an arbitrary plot lever. One moment he is playing the Hollywood notion of the Wicked Squire, the next moment he is bestowing bloodless caresses on Cathy without conviction (and without receiving any apparent encouragement). Then he is suddenly the Dictatorial Brother when it suits the plot... and yet mysteriously fails to react at all to Heathcliff's presence in his wife's bedroom.
The role written for Isabella Linton is a better one, and the conflict between her and Cathy was the only part of the second half that carried any emotional charge for me. Again, the storyline is so compressed that we never see any lover-like scenes take place between her and Heathcliff and have to take her word for it -- adding an additional unintended frisson, since we can't tell from this if she is deluding herself or indeed just taunting her sister-in-law! The supposed erotic charge between Heathcliff and Cathy, on the other hand, more or less has to be taken as written. I have trouble with this throughout the film (as I said above, the two are most credible as passionate lovers only when quarrelling violently) and I found their scenes together in the second half even less inspiring. This Cathy doesn't come across as having any particular attachment to the moors, being more interested in parties and fashion than 'sleeping under haystacks' with her lover; it is perhaps symptomatic that for an inherent love of the high places is substituted a fantasy of herself as Queen of a pretend castle there.
In the last analysis, despite having no attachment to the original source, after viewing this film I was left with the feeling that it isn't really satisfactory as a 'Hollywood' production either. Both as an adaptation and as a drama I would recommend the BBC TV broadcast version of the 1960s; to the best of my recall it doesn't cover the 'second generation' either, the budget is clearly far lower and it is basically a recreation of a studio-bound live broadcast, but it has a power and a coherency (and, I would guess, an understanding of its setting and period) that I find lacking here.