Wuthering Heights (1939)
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Director: William Wyler
Starring: Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier
Honors:
It is a movie about love, loss, regret, and loathing. All
that comes in the package in Wuthering
Heights based on the novel of the same. Produced by the small, but high
quality based Samuel Goldwyn Production, Wuthering
Heights is an emotionally intense love story filled with passion and hate.
Starring a talented cast of foreign actors all making large impacts on the
American cinema, the film would become one of the very highest praised
productions of the year.
Wuthering Heights
is a drama of a man and woman born into different circumstance brought together,
their long and complicated love affair, and how social standards keep them
apart until the bitter end. The picture is told in one large flashback to a
weary traveler named Lockwood (Miles Mander) as he stumbles upon Wuthering
Heights and its eerie owner Heathcliff (Laurence Olivier). After experiencing a
supernatural event in the night the tale is told of the love affair of
Heathcliff and supposed specter Lockwood saw, Heathcliff’s lover Cathy (Merle
Oberon).
Heathcliff and Cathy meet as children, Heathcliff being
brought in by Cathy’s father as a roaming homeless child. Through the years
their friendship grows to a passion, but Heathcliff is constantly reminded he
is only a stable boy. Cathy dreams of wealth and high society with Heathcliff
in the future, but gets caught up with a wealthy neighbor Edgar Linton (David
Niven) that leads to her marriage with the dignified gentleman, leaving Heathcliff
with the drive to remind Cathy that she is really in love with him. To make her
jealous Heathcliff marries Edgar’s naïve sister, which works, but only fans the
flames of hate as well as passion between the two. Broken by his loathing
actions Cathy falls ill. Heathcliff rushes to be by her side as she passes away
declaring that she always loved him the most in her life. Broken Heathcliff
lived in the now somber Wuthering Heights until the night Lockwood hears
Cathy’s voice. He goes to his lost love and dies in a winter storm to be
reunited as soulmates.
In the length of this feature film the audience lives a
lifetime of passion between these two characters. Wrapped in the emotion of
these two whom you know love each other, but are somehow kept apart makes for a
heart wrenching picture. With brilliant cinematography that seems to add
dimensionality to the story, pulling you further into the world of Heathcliff
and Cathy it is easy to see why Wuthering
Heights would be one of the highest praised pictures in 1939, a year
thought to perhaps be the greatest in Hollywood’s history.
The direction of William Wyler is very close, if not actually
perfect. He really explores the space in the world around Wuthering Heights. Shots and angles are made to harken back to
moments seen earlier in the film and Wyler cleverly masks them in a way that
makes one realize emotional connections of the past, furthering the expressive
meaning of moments in the picture. An example is when Heathcliff visits the now
married Cathy. While they share a scene where both remain cordial, their hangs
an unspoken emotional cloud over the entirety of the scene. It is only until a
little later when Heathcliff leaves does Wyler push back the camera to reveal
an angle that reminds the audience of an earlier scene where Heathcliff and
Cathy where madly in love and dreamt of a future together, but now only Cathy
is their alone far from happy. It is great staging such as this that makes good
movies great.
Wyler was a notorious perfectionist when it came to his
productions and Wuthering Heights was
no different. This led to quarrels with his cast. Merle Oberon was an
established star in American already with Laurence Olivier was working in
America for the first time. Both did not care for the dozens and dozens of takes
Wyler would put them through until he got what he wanted. Each had their bouts
with the director while at the same time the stars did not care for each other.
Olivier still considered himself a stage actor, seeing film as being well below in art to him. Olivier would have
shouting matches with Wyler and Oberon. With Wyler he detested the process of
take after take, feeling Wyler was one never to be pleased. With Oberon Olivier
he grew to despise just working on stage with her. They would fight about
everything from acting style to spit that flew out of their mouths when they spoke
during love scenes. Wyler would remind Olivier that Oberon was the star and he
was a nobody in America.
Through all the childishness came Olivier first major hit in
America and his first Oscar nomination for acting. Years later Olivier would
write how Wyler was the man that helped make him a better actor and who taught him
how to appreciate motion pictures. Wuthering
Heights was a major step for Olivier as he became a huge international star
in Hollywood in the coming decades.
The film adaptation would omit several key points in the
novel, including the omission of over half of the books chapters and many
characters. The novel contained a multi-generational tale as Heathcliff and
Cathy each had a child with their respective others. These children would
continue the story, but the movie would cut them out focusing on the singular
drama.
It was producer Samuel Goldwyn that fought director William
Wyler so very hard to produce the ending we see in the finished film with the
ghosts of Heathcliff and Cathy walking with each other into eternity. Being
that this moment was against the story
of the novel and there were heavy protests from Wyler about this ending the scene
was shot well after production. In fact Oberon and Olivier were not even able
to film the shot, filling the lovers’ roles with body doubles. Goldwyn would
later praise the film as his favorite picture he ever produced.
Characters played by David Nevin and Geraldine Fitzgerald
would be paired as Cathy’s husband and Heathcliff’s wife. Fitzgerald’s
performance might have been significantly changed and shortened from the novel’s
original character, but her performance would make up for it. Playing the naïve
sister to David Nevin’s character, Heathcliff uses her character, named
Isabella, to make Cathy jealous. At first she is a love sick young lady, but
she would turn into the broken wife of Heathcliff, a mess of a woman that knows
she is not the love or focus of his life. Fitzgerald’s performance would earn
her a nomination for best supporting actress.
Wuthering Heights
would be one of the highest praised films of the year that saw more than its
share of highly thought of pictures. With its deeply emotion story and terrific
cast and director the film would gain praise by many and for an extended period
of time. In the highly contested Academy Awards Wuthering Heights was up for eight awards including categories of
best art direction, best score, best screenplay, best supporting actress, best
actor, best director, and best picture. Its lone Oscar that it took home was
for best black and white cinematography. Cinematography Gregg Toland ‘s craft
would continue to be demonstrated as one of the industry’s finest as he would
work on Orson Welles’ masterpiece Citizen
Kane. After much debate in many ballots The New York Film Critics would
name Wuthering Heights the best film
of 1939, primarily because voters could not choose between Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Gone with the Wind, settling on this picture instead.
The picture would continue to receive praise from critics in
years to come. The American Film Institute listed Wuthering Heights the 73rd greatest American film in its
1998 poll, and 15th romantic film on its 2002 poll. In 2007 the
picture was named to the National Film Registry as culturally significant to
preserve in the Library of Congress.
Wuthering Heights
still makes an emotional love story to contemporary audiences that enjoy older
pictures. Once again this is another case of a very fine film buried underneath
the grander and more recognizable features that transcend the decades from
1939. It marks a turning point in the career of Laurence Olivier as he would
become one of the most decorated men in cinema history. The feature stands a
wonderful piece of dramatic filmmaking of the period and deserves to stand
among its counterparts in a year of remarkable filmmaking.
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