Wuthering Heights (1939)

USA
directed by: William Wyler
written by: Charles MacArthur, Ben Hecht, John Huston + Emily Brontë (book)
starring: Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, Flora Robson, Geraldine Fitzgerald
seen: 19th August, 2015

I liked the ever-present wind. In the never-ending fight between differrent adaptations about who is going to be the biggest monster in their version of the story, I see that the film-makers here decided it should be Cathy, who really is as insufferable, shallow, and overbearing as possible.

From my present-day point of view (knowing that actors are almost always more attractive than an "average" person and in the past it was double the truth) it is still unfathomable why would anyone keep telling the aristocratic-and-upright-looking Laurence Olivier that he is a filthy and crooked creature. I thing he represents the thing I would call a total miscast.

I have recently seen a modern adaptation (by Andrea Arnold) where they made the effort to show the life, the house and the surroundings realistically and plausibly, so it makes me smirk a little to see this idealized vision of life on a godforsaken heath - but that's a mistake (?) made by many literary adaptations.

In the space she got to play with I was most impressed by Geraldine Fitzgerald. I mean, Isabella was always my favourite character, but the more important thing is that her performance is the one that is the most time-resistant, I would say.

And I must confess that I would very much like to see a film one day where everything shown here would be just an exposition culminating with a jilted lover forbiding the ghost of his dying loved one to leave in peace, and than the body of the film would describe decades of getting old on the moor with the ghost and always seeing or sensing the never-closed gate to the afterlife in the barren land surrounding the house.