litlover12

THE FILMS OF 1939, PART 4

4/4/14

Classic stories are often called “timeless,” but that’s not always the most accurate description. Literary classics go in and out of fashion just as clothing does; what’s considered a literary masterpiece today may have been considered barely respectable by yesterday’s academics and readers, and vice versa.

Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” is a perfect example. When this passionate, violent novel was first published in 1847, many found it shocking. Even the novelist’s own sister, Charlotte (author of “Jane Eyre”), was taken aback by certain aspects of Emily’s work. Somehow, the fiercely private daughter of a Yorkshire clergyman—a young woman who had little formal education, seldom left home, and died at the age of 30—had managed to produce a strikingly original but profoundly unsettling love story.

Catherine Earnshaw (more often referred to as “Cathy” in the film adaptation) and Heathcliff, the wayward young lovers whose wild behavior horrifies the civilized people around them, have taken their place among the best-known characters in world literature. When Mr. Earnshaw, master of the Yorkshire estate from which the story takes its name, discovers the orphaned Heathcliff on the streets and brings him home, other members of the household scorn him, but little Catherine befriends him. Her love for him lasts into adulthood, even as her brother, Hindley, treats him like a servant. But Catherine eventually chooses to marry the wealthy Edgar Linton, leaving Heathcliff torn with rage, jealousy, and a deadly desire for revenge.

In later decades, Emily Brontë’s sole novel would rise in the critics’ estimation, due largely to its challenges to conventional Victorian mores and to the mystique that surrounded its reclusive author. In recent years, though, many have come to see it as a clichéd and overwrought story about selfish, inconsiderate people. (Despite this, or perhaps because of this, “Twilight” readers have helped keep it alive.)

Yet however high or low the popularity of “Wuthering Heights” at any given moment, there’s no denying that the romanticism it represents has worked itself into the very fabric of our culture. Professor Lilia Melani of Brooklyn College has identified some of the elements of that romanticism in “Wuthering Heights”:

–“. . . Nature is a living, vitalizing force and offers a refuge from the constraints of civilization,
–“the passion driving Catherine and Heathcliff and their obsessive love for each other are the center of their being and transcend death,
–“so great a focus is placed on the individual that society is pushed to the periphery of the action and the reader’s consciousness,
–“the concern with identity and the creation of the self are a primary concern,
–“childhood and the adult’s developing from childhood experiences are presented realistically,
–“Heathcliff is the Byronic hero; both are rebellious, passionate, misanthropic, isolated, and wilful, have mysterious origins, lack family ties, reject external restrictions and control, and seek to resolve their isolation by fusing with a love object. . . .”

Some of these elements will look familiar to the modern reader. If “Wuthering Heights” had few clear predecessors, it has countless descendants. Every book or movie about forbidden love, every cultural voice insisting that love transcends all and that nothing must stand in its way, owes something to that romanticism. Without it, there probably couldn’t have been a “Twilight”—or “Titanic,” or “The Notebook,” or many of our other most popular love stories.

It seems safe to say this influence is due as much, or more, to the acclaimed 1939 film adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” as to the novel itself. With two scintillating leads in Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, a strong supporting cast led by David Niven, a script by literary lights Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, and the California landscape offering a credible recreation of the untamed Yorkshire moors, William Wyler’s film gives us a glamorized treatment of Heathcliff and Cathy’s tormented love story (or at least of the first half of it—but more on that in a moment).

Subsequent adaptations have been more faithful to Emily Brontë’s unflinchingly gritty novel—it’s hard not to feel amused when Olivier’s Heathcliff, berated by all for his “dirty hands,” finally gives the audience a glimpse of them and we see that they’re squeaky clean. But for generations, Olivier and Oberon’s Heathcliff and Cathy were the Heathcliff and Cathy.

We sometimes forget just how much Wyler’s version changes and simplifies Emily Brontë’s story. Strongly influenced though she was by Byronic romanticism, Brontë also had a cooler, more practical side. Her doomed lovers may be the most powerful characters in her novel, but she does not always portray them as admirable. There are grim and sometimes gory incidents in the book that are omitted in the film—for instance, Heathcliff viciously attacking Hindley with a knife, or strangling a dog nearly to death. Though we know Heathcliff has been horribly treated by Hindley and others—both the book and movie show us how he suffers under the merciless class distinctions of the time—his savage retaliation is more appalling than satisfying.

And in the novel, other voices besides those of the main characters are allowed to have their say. We get a sizable dose of the often sardonic and skeptical commentary of Ellen Dean, the housekeeper at Wuthering Heights; we sympathize with the downtrodden Isabella, Catherine’s sister-in-law and Heathcliff’s eventual wife, and root for her to escape from her husband’s stifling grasp. We’re aware of just how high a price others pay for the self-willed folly of the central characters—and how high a price they themselves pay. While Heathcliff and Catherine might say it was all worth it, it’s clear that there’s room for dissent on that score.

But the movie ramps up the romanticism and quiets those other voices to little more than a whisper. The once-acerbic Ellen (Flora Robson) is reduced to saccharine sympathizing. There are significant differences in Cathy’s portrayal as well. Catherine in the novel is brought to grief by her own self-centered passions. Having given up the freedom of wandering on the moors with Heathcliff for a prestigious position as Edgar’s wife, she can’t endure her new role; she storms and cries and works herself into fits, until she finally makes herself deathly ill. But Cathy in the movie simply loses her will to live and dies gracefully in Heathcliff’s arms when he comes to see her one last time.

Also, the movie entirely leaves out the section of the novel devoted to the children of Catherine, Heathcliff, and Hindley. As a new romantic drama plays out among this second generation, we see a chance at redemption for them, as Heathcliff’s attempts at vengeance and control slowly weaken. The film, by contrast, leaves us with a last shot of a ghostly Heathcliff and Cathy, whose love has indeed transcended death, walking away across the moors. They, so to speak, have the final say.

With all this, “Wuthering Heights,” as a film, is still worthy of the label “classic.” Its spellbinding performances and award-winning cinematography are still worth watching. It’s worth considering as a cultural milestone as well—to help us understand the root of so much that’s inherent in our culture today.

“Cathy, if your heart were only stronger than your dull fear of God and the world I would live silently contented in your shadow,” Heathcliff says in the film. “But no, you must destroy us both with that weakness you call virtue.” Again, these are sentiments that are all too familiar to us now. If “Wuthering Heights” feels clichéd to us today, it’s because it was itself the source of so many clichés. But it’s not a bad idea to remind ourselves of where these ideas came from, and of the destructiveness that so often lurks under their alluring promise.

For Further Information:

“Wuthering Heights” was nominated for eight Academy Awards, and won one: Best Cinematography, Black-and-White.

“Wuthering Heights” is available from Amazon and Netflix.

--Gina Dalfonzo