The Timothy Dalton Chat Group
A Review of Wuthering Heights by Lefki Beletsi
On the left is Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff.
"Wuthering Heights", the novel, does not take kindly to adaptations for the screen.
Dying to know why?
All you have to do is help yourself to the following list of the chief incidents in the story:
Mr Earnshaw brings Heathcliff to Wuthering Heights. Mr Earnshaw and Cathy love him, Mrs Earnshaw and Hindley hate him. Mrs Earnshaw dies. Hindley goes to college. Mr Earnshaw dies. Hindley comes home with a wife, Frances. Hindley is now master of the Heights. Hindley is cruel to Heathcliff. Catherine and Heathcliff's friendship deepens: they are wild, inseparable. Enter the Lintons of Thrushcross Grange: Mr and Mrs Linton and the children: Edgar and Isabella. Cathy has an accident and stays at the Grange for five weeks. She returns to the Heights apparently transformed into a lady. For a short while she and Heathcliff seem to be worlds apart, but eventually their relationship proves to be stronger than ever. Hindley's son, Hareton, is born. Frances dies. Hindley falls apart and takes to drink. Cathy decides to marry Edgar. Heathcliff disappears. Cathy becomes ill with a fever. She convalesces at the Grange. Mr and Mrs Linton die. Edgar becomes master of the Grange. Cathy marries Edgar. Heathcliff returns and stays at the Heights with Hindley and
Hareton. Heathcliff visits Cathy at the Grange. Isabella falls in love with Heathcliff. Heathcliff and Isabella elope. Cathy becomes ill with brain-fever. Heathcliff and Isabella get married and live at the Heights. Cathy's daughter, Catherine Linton, is born. Cathy dies in childbirth. Hindley dies. Isabella escapes from the Heights and gives birth to Linton, Heathcliff's son. Isabella dies. Heathcliff takes his son, Linton, to the Heights. Catherine is tricked into a love affair with Linton and forced to marry him. Edgar dies. Linton dies. Heathcliff is master of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Catherine stays at the Heights. Heathcliff puts a tenant in the Grange, Lockwood. Lockwood spends a night as a guest at the Heights and encounters the ghost of Cathy. Heathcliff becomes obsessed with death. Catherine and Hareton fall in love and plan to marry. Heathcliff dies.
Mind-boggling? Too many people? Too much happening? Too dizzying a whirl of birth and death and passion and yearning
and deceit?
Couldn't agree with you more.
But you won't be let off so lightly.
Now, if we add a multitude of secondary events and plot twists, two narratorial voices (Nelly, a servant, is the principal narrator while Lockwood, Heathcliff's tenant, is a secondary narrator), and a combination of present (Lockwood) and retrospect (Nelly) narration, then we can really begin to feel for the screenwriter.
Robert Fuest's 1971 version of "Wuthering Heights" (starring Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff and Anna Calder-Marshall as
Cathy) is both bold and inventive in harnessing a complicated book to the requirements of film drama. Throughout the film, the
focus is on the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff. Defying the novel's plot, the film ends halfway through the book by
having Heathcliff shot by Hindley. This is not a filmed book. It is an imaginative interpretation of the mutliple layers of meaning
in the book.
Anna Calder-Marshall and Timothy Dalton are unforgettable in their portrayal of the two ill-fated lovers. They ARE Cathy and Heathcliff. I believe the popular term for the exquisite coordination of their performances is "chemistry": a cold, inadequate vehicle for such fine tuning of professionalism and passion, but it will have to do.
There are so many memorable scenes in this film that one hardly knows where to begin. Who can forget Cathy & Heathcliff's mischievous, delightful playfulness on their escapade to Thrushcross Grange? Cathy's despair as she declares "I am Heathcliff!"? Heathcliff's "half-civilized ferocity" (in Emily Bronte's words) when he visits the Grange after his long absence? Or his stony gaze as he attends, from afar, Cathy's funeral? This image, which opens the film and is resumed again near the end, reminds me of a poem by Thomas Hardy, called "She at his funeral". Like the protagonist of the poem, Heathcliff attends his lover's funeral "at a stranger's space" while his "regret consumes like fire".
If you love the book, enjoy the film: go to it with an open mind and see how one artistic form can be transformed into another.
If you have enjoyed the film, read the book: you will gain deeper insight into the characters and appreciate the film even more.
"Wuthering Heights" is an open text. The plot strands may be all tucked in in the end but the big questions remain: Who or what is Heathcliff? Who or what is Cathy? What irresistible force brings them together beyond the grave? If you go to the film for convenient answers, you will be disappointed. Robert Fuest's version will not ease your mind; on the contrary, it will take you on a rough journey of self-examination, where you will have to decide for yourself what the story is really about, what passion is and what price to pay. One thing is for sure: there are some bold creative choices in this film as well as compelling acting and great music. The rest is up to you.
"I could fancy a love for life here almost possible", muses Heathcliff's tenant at some point in the book. Give Robert Fuest's
film a chance and you just might reach the same conclusion.
I know I did.
Wuthering Heights review was written by Lefki Beletsi © January 2000.
Some extra information on the locations where Wuthering Heights was filmed.
This information was taken from an old edition of Film Review.
In the movie Wuthering Heights Thrushcross Grange, stately home of the wealthy Linton family, was Weston Hall, a gracious 17th-Century manor house, near Otley. The house for the Heights is called Redshaw House which is at the edge of the moors at a place called Blubberhouses. The film unit apparently stayed in a hotel in Leeds called The Merrion Hotel. Exteriors were also shot at Brimham Rocks, near Hammerbridge, which became the famous Pennistone Crags of the Bronte story. The unit also filmed at Dancing Bear Rock and Hay Stack, scene of climactic moorland funeral. "It's like Boot Hill in Yorkshire" was Timothy Dalton's wry comment while shooting these scenes.
I would like to very much thank Lefki for writing the review of Wuthering Heights and I would also like to thank Marc and Heidi Schouten for the wonderful drawing of Timothy as Heathcliff, and finally last but not least Margaret for sending me the film location details for Wuthering Heights a while ago now, but which of course I kept.
