Thanks for the memories!

Crappy film

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Director: WILLIAM WYLER. Screenplay: Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, based on the 1847 novel by Emily Bronte. Photography: Gregg Toland. Film editor: Daniel Mandell. Art director: James Basevi. Set decorator: Julia Heron. Musical director: Alfred Newman. Costume designer: Omar Kiam. Uncredited additional dialogue: John Huston. Matte painter: W. Percy Day. Assistant director: Walter Mayo. Special character make- up: Blagoe Stephanoff. Technical adviser: Peter Shaw. Sound recording: Paul Neal. Western Electric Sound System. Producer: Samuel Goldwyn.Copyright 24 April 1939 by Samuel Goldwyn. Released through United Artists. New York opening at the Rivoli, 13 April 1939. U.S. release: 7 April 1939. U.K. release: May 1939. Australian release: 7 September 1939. 11 reels. 103 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Aristocratic country girl falls in love with her (adopted) brother.NOTES: Academy Award, Black-and-White cinematography (defeating Stagecoach). Also nominated for Best Picture (GWTW), Best Actor, Laurence Olivier (Donat as Mr Chips), Supporting Actress, Geraldine Fitzgerald (Hattie McDaniel in GWTW), Directing (Fleming for GWTW), Screenplay (GWTW), Art Direction (GWTW) Original Music Score (Wizard of Oz).4th in the Film Daily's annual poll of U.S. film critics. Best Motion Picture of 1939 — New York Film Critics.COMMENT: It's hard not to like Wuthering Heights. The idea of willingly submitting to a "great literary classic" is not an attractive one, but the story is so strong, the acting so involving, the atmosphere so fixating and production values so sweeping that Wuthering Heights is a pleasure. In fact, it's a feast of entertainment, a powerful drama that moves at a headlong pace and compels rapt attention from start to finish. Every player is perfectly cast, and Wyler has directed with masterly finesse. The sets and costumes are breathtaking (yet not garishly over-sumptuous), and Toland has lovingly photographed every dynamically pictorial frame. When re-issued worldwide in 1956, the film's powerful compositions were distorted by wide-screen projection. Fortunately, TV has treated the film more kindly. It is still constantly broadcast. In fact the film has proved more popular on television than on its original theatrical release. So enduring has been its popularity that American International Pictures (the king of the "exploitation" movies) attempted a re-make in 1970 with Robert Fuest directing Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall. Not surprisingly, this lost every cent of its investors' money. There's also a Luis Bunuel 1953 Mexican version, Abismos de Pasion with Jorge Mistral and Irasema Dilian, and a 1920 British silent with Milton Rosmer and Anne Trevor. TV itself has staged at least seven versions. Don't bother with any of them. The Wyler-Goldwyn 1939 movie is not only the best, it's unbeatable. Merle Oberon never gave a more captivating performance and while Olivier did occasionally equal the power of his present portrayal, he never bettered the intensity of Heathcliff.

I have never seen WHeights until last night as my wife is a mega Olivier fan and always loved the film. So we sat down for a total glorious piece of soap opera trash acting. Like all the Bronte tales (I think of Jane Eyre), the mood is dark and longing. The sets, here, were mostly good for the time but some process shots were so obvious as to be painful.Cathy and Heathcliff - how could he possibly LOVE a woman who changes her mind LIKE THAT on who she likes and wants to marry? I found zero sympathy for Merle Oberon in this role - she is a woman to stay far away from. (Hey, if the only place you can kiss a girlfriend is standing on one cliff, something is wrong). And every time old Olivier gets offended as a character, BAM off he goes on his horse.Everybody else is perfectly fine having little to do but stand and comment on this train wreck of a relationship. Niven, as fine as he is, is just THERE to be the nice chap who gets taken for a fool by Kathy who really loves Heathcliff when she is not saying nasty things about him and BAM off he goes again.If there are spoilers here, the book and film have been around for ages so who cares. It is also a plot one can see coming for miles.But it is glorious fun trash and the ACTING? OMG - Kathy's deathbed scene makes Love Story look like Hamlet. Wide eyes, smiles, pain, wide eyes, clawed hands, wide eye..... oh, painful. I could just see her coming down the stairs with Heathcliff at the bottom 'These are the stairs of the heights.....' like Max in SBoulevard. Olivier was almost as bad here.This is a wonderful piece of high trash, enjoy it, laugh a lot and remember that films often do not make much sense at all either in watching or by those who make them.In the end, Kathy should have told Heathcliff "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn".

I have a couple of confessions to make for starters, actually. The first confession is that I have never read the Emily Brontë novel and the second that this is also only just the very first film adaptation of the legendary story that I watched. Since there isn't a point in reading a book after having seen the film, and since I'm pretty convinced that none of the other hundred or so film versions can surpass this fantastic 1939 version, it will probably remain and one and only acquaintance with "Wuthering Heights". How to describe the events taking place in this immortal story? Well, I believe Charles Bukowski described it best with the title of his own work "Love is a dog from hell"… It's a love story, but an utmost depressing and melancholic one, with loathsome characters as well as gloomy decors and mournful dialogs all around, but simultaneously all this is also exactly why it's MY type of love story! Just like in that other cinematic milestone from the same wondrous year 1939, "Gone with the Wind", this is more tragedy than romance and you certainly don't have to expect an overload of mellifluous situations or a happy-happy-joy-joy denouement. Perfectionist director William Wyler was the ideal man to turn the legendary novel into a milestone motion picture, because even though the British roots are missing and there isn't much attention given to the role of the rural setting, he does provide the film with a strong atmosphere of morbidity. Allegedly the production process of "Wuthering Heights" wasn't a very pleasant time for everyone involved, neither. The cast and crew quickly got fed up with the endless number of takes that the perfectionist director demanded, the director wasn't enthusiast to work for a producer – Samuel Goldwyn – that usually only makes bland movies and, most of all, the star actor Laurence Olivier and star actress Merle Oberon couldn't stand each other. I'm convinced, however, that all these tensions contributed to the fact that "Wuthering Heights" became such a flawless and influential classic. Oberon depicts a despicable character, as Cathy is a selfish and capricious shrew, but she does it wonderfully. And even though Laurence Olivier's Heathcliff is fundamentally a creepy and disturbing psychopath, he's still one of the most desirably male characters in the history of cinema. Just ask Kate Bush

Talk about a brooding outdoors, those moody moors may represent a sense of liberation for the lovers, but they're not exactly inviting. Besides, it rains all the time, so best to be in the house even if mansions represent the confining space of class and class privilege. That's the trouble. Cathy is 'to the manor born', as they say. Thus she's really torn between the wild outdoors and the comforts of ballrooms and servants. Then there's the enigmatic Heathcliffe, a dark wild-souled type guy, perfectly at home in those bleak rolling hills. He was a street ragamuffin before Cathy's elderly father adopted him into the manor as a stable boy. But he and a young Cathy manage to bond despite the class difference, a bond that eventually blossoms into true love. But that true love only breaks to the surface in the wild outdoors where a common humanity replaces artificial social distinctions. If only Cathy could find the will to break free of the leisure class.What a great visual experience, the b&w expertly coordinated with the settings. When the two lovers approach the rocky crag, there's almost a feeling of an outdoor altar calling to them amidst the brooding hills. It's such a perfect visual contrast to the high-key ballrooms and parlors of the Lintons. The Lintons, however, are not to be despised despite their airs and privileges. In fact, they are very real victims of Cathy's suppressed feelings and Heathcliffe's cold calculations. As it turns out, there is no spectral salvation for them. As a result, the love being portrayed here is a kind of mad love, one that brings tragedy to all concerned. Thus, there's a reason those moors brood in dark fashion, while the movie itself remains the best of the many makes and remakes.