Sorry, this movie sucks

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

It's the spellbinding on-screen adaptation of a woman's only novel and one of the most iconic literature romances.It's the tormented and tormenting tale of a doomed love inspiring one of the greatest movies of 1939.And it stars one half of the Laurence Olivier - Vivien Leigh couple, but it is NOT "Gone with the Wind".It was certainly in Hollywood cards that the atmospheric black-and-white "Wuthering Heights", as sweet as a strong espresso, would forever be overshadowed by the Technicolor orgy of autumnal bonfires and taffetas dresses from the Best Picture winner of the year. Still, what a year!1939 was Hollywood's finest hour, its majestic culmination over a world about to collapse under the rollercoaster of the Blitzkrieg before the game-changing "day of infamy". But war wasn't yet occupying the big studios' territories and only the winds of tempestuous romances could roar along with the MGM Lion. "Gone With the Wind" but also "The Wizard of Oz" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" formed the glorious triumvirate of 1939, all represented in the American Film Institute's Top 100 list of 2007. Yet 10 years earlier, they were five with "Stagecoach" and William Wyler's classic. If I was to asked which one should have been kept, I would have probably sided with John Ford. This is not to lower the level of cinematic excellence reached in these "Wuthering Heights" but while the film is a masterpiece of Gothic romance thanks to its haunting cinematography and the intensity of Laurence Olivier's performance, love orbits the iconic couple in a way that causes so much histrionic pain and theatrical angerthat the childhood scenes felt more genuine. Or was it a lack of chemistry between the two stars? Seeing Merle Oberon as the flighty and coquette Catherine, I was immediately reminded me of Vivien Leigh who was considered for the role. Olivier hated not to have his beloved wife as a co-star. But Leigh would grace the screen as Scarlett O'Hara and win the Oscar while Oberon wasn't even nominated, as if once again, the Gods and the odds were against the "Emily Brontë" team. I wouldn't dare to imagine Leigh in Oberon's part because I can't imagine another profile facing Gable in "Wind".And "Wind" isn't an encouragement to story revisionism either because the film is virtually flawless and the characters' actions make sense even in their own twisted way. In "Heights", there's something fascinatingly confusing in the way everyone's his or her worst enemy. Obviously Catherine and Heatchliff love each other but Catherine wants Heathcliff to be rich and powerful, and he's got the right stuff but he's too authentic and stubborn to play along. And only when he plays the game and plays it damn too well that the dice are cast already. This is a Gothic romance, not a romantic story, not even a tragedy for it's full of sordidness, sorrow and bitterness, even to the peripheral characters such as Hindley (Hugh Williams) who drowns in alcohol the sorrow of not being half the son his foster brother was then half the man he became, Isabella (Oscar-nominated Geraldine Fitzgerald), the naïve sister-in-law too enamored to see that she's Heatchliff's pawn while her brother Edgar (David Niven) is too much of a chess expert to be fooled, if only he could only see his blandness mirrored in Catherine's eyes. What an irony from a film that features so many exchanges of looks and death glares that a few can really "see" and when they do, it's too late. One of the best moments occurs during a piano audition and from the way the four players of this tragicomedy stare at each other, we realize that we're in a hellish maze of human contradictions. The only constant and decent character is the sweet housekeeper Ellen (Flora Robson). She narrates the story to the estranged visitor who represents our point of view, the film opens in a cold winter night but the reception the visitor got from Heatchliff made the outside feel as warm as Hawaii.I guess that was the outcome of a romance where two lovers toyed with their feelings until they broke them. In the core, this is hot volcano romance yet the film leaves that point platonically ambiguous and depending on theatrical moments. What a missed opportunity, Olivier is like Lord Byron's portrait carved on a granite stone and whose death glare can undress the Devil himself, and Oberon so typically aristocratic but has her Indian-ness suddenly illuminating the screen during that moment when she ran after Heatcliff under the storm, such a cold British romance but so oddly exotic... if it wasn't for that Hays Code, handled with more audacity by Victor Flemming. Just remember that naughty smile on Vivien Leigh's face after the infamous stairs scene, suggesting that Gable was quite the beast that night, not to mention the line that proved that posterity didn't give a damn about correction. "Wuthering Heights" was all in poses and attitudes beautifully executed but rather than elevating a romance, they emphasized the "tense" in "intense". Oddly or fittingly, it reminded me of my discovery of that book, in a "Who's the Boss" episode. Tony and Angela were reading it together and the atmosphere was so heated they had to switch to "The Cat in the Hat". Maybe that's the way Emily Brontë envisioned that passion.Still, what an irony that like Margaret Mitchell, it was the only novel she wrote, but maybe it goes like novels as it goes with loves, there's only one great one, the others are just pale copies or inexistent. The love between Heathcliff and Cathy was so passionate it confined to these "you are what you love" madness and the romance couldn't go with death, couldn't have be ... gone with the wind, quite the contrary... the 'happy ending' might be too naïve although impacting. Was Wyler too classic or was Brontë too ahead-of-her-time? That's a riddle for ages.

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".

When I watched this film there was something very unrealistic about the love story. After reading about the life of Emily Bronte who wrote it, then it all starting making sense- how could a slightly under 30 year old woman during the 1800s, who was probably a virgin, know the reality or obstacles of love... she couldn't and wouldn't. Also how could she permit a male character to be so abusive and mean to many around him as Emily most likely had this experience of men during her own upbringing, so she must have felt a soft place for these types of personalities no matter how abusive they might have been (the main male character in Jane Eyre is also somewhat abusive but softens as the story moves forward). Anything sensible about love in this story would have probably been influenced or transferred by Charlotte her elder sister, who did a lot of the editing for the book to be published and then re-published. Charlotte did not marry until much later in life but perhaps had more experiences with other's issues of love to be a bit more practical in her view than her sister Emily. People who find this story terrific would have to be somewhat emotionally immature or fantasy-like in their ideals of love. This is a melodrama and one far from being factual... When Heathcliff marries another woman and treats her like basically dirt, people seem to only admire his character for being this way because his heart bleeds for Cathy, therefore he is forgiven... Heathcliff's character is a sadistic narcissists. And in the end when Cathy is sick on her deathbed because she chose a life of riches and comforts with a man she did not love or wouldn't due to her lingering inextinguishable passion for Heathcliff, people feel sorry for her as well and forgive her for her shortcomings... Cathy is another narcissistic personality (histrionic) who was basically out for her own advancement and threw out her love for Heathcliff because of it to be able to use another man (not much different than prostitution really). Its a wonder why such a novel would be so popular among the mainstream as most people worship narcissistic personalities and give little regard or empathy to the the other characters who were treated poorly or hurt such as Cathy's husband or Heathcliff's wife because they are viewed as less important. I found the story too fantasy-like, not developed in its definition of 'true love' and the main characters too self-absorbed or selfish to really be liked. I was disappointed with this story and felt it was dark and a love story far from being applicable to real life. I found Jane Erye a much better film with a more realistic approach to romance and love, so I thoroughly enjoyed it. The only really positive thing I can say about this film is that the actors are good and the scenery is nice which captures a bit of old England, and the costumes well represent the time period. However, i would not base any ideas about real love coming from this story as it is just too make belief. All the Bronte sisters who wrote lived for years in a fictional world of their own and I would say this story is an example of that fictional world, so I hope people leave it as fiction.

Wonderful Golden Age Hollywood treatment of Emily Bronte's immortal novel, you know it's going to be good just from the initial titles as names like Laurence Olivier, Flora Robson, William Wyler, Greg Toland and many other greats pass by. The evocation of place is superbly realised so that you never doubt you're in the bleakly beautiful Yorkshire landscape which forms such an evocative background to events as they play out on the screenThe film retains the basic framework of the book with the traveller's dead-of-winter visit to an embittered Heathcliffe's house leading to Flora Robson's maid flash-backing us into the main story of the doomed, tragic love between childhood sweethearts Heathcliffe and Cathy as they push and pull themselves into adulthood, collaterally damaging different members of the neighbouring rich Linton family who fall into their orbit.For me the best acting was actually by Dame Flora Robson as the faithful retainer Mary who wants the best for both of her charges, but who has her loyalties tested in their on-off-on love-hate relationship. She clearly has little time for the cruel, wastrel older brother Linley played effectively by Hugh Williams in a likely pen-portrait of the older Bronte brother Branwell. Olivier takes some time to settle into his role and leave his exaggerated stage mannerisms behind him but eventually succeeds by applying the less-is-more dictum, his dark brooding personality in the end dominating the piece and setting the mark by which all his successors in the role will be rated. I was slightly less impressed with Merle Oberon as Cathy, insofar despite a committed performance, she lacks real beauty in her face and never quite convinces us of her character's magnetic personality. David Niven is surprisingly insipid as the snobbish, besotted Linton in an admittedly underwritten part but Geraldine Chaplin is better as his feisty sister who deliberately subjugates herself to Heathcliffe, content to accept the scraps from his table.The whole however is masterfully directed by director Wyler and wonderfully filmed by camera-man Toland, whose sharp, deep-focus black and white cinematography, both in exterior and interior locations, adds so much to the narrative. It's a good thing when a classic novel gets the film treatment it deserves and that's certainly the case here.