A visitor to Wuthering Heights is touched by the ghost of Cathy, and then is told the story of the disastrous love between Cathy (Merle Oberon), an upper class girl, and Heathcliff (Laurence Olivier), a penniless gypsy. After pledging themselves to each other, Cathy turns from him to obtain a life of luxury. That brings tragedy not only to them, but to everyone near them.
Wuthering Heights isn’t a ghost story, but rather a Harlequin romance with supernatural bookends. Today, Emily Brontë’s story would be published with a bare-chested Fabio on the cover, holding a swooning buxom babe in one hand, and gazing out over the moors (where there might be pirates—you never know). You can label it a classic, but that doesn’t make it any more important than The Viscount Who Loved Me or Mistress Mabel and the Handsome Pirate.
While the film was conceived as a tearjerker (and was successful), it is hard to figure what about these unpleasant people could pull a tear from even chronic sobbers. Angst-ridden Heathcliff is a sadomasochistic wretch of a human being, and he’s the best of the lot. Cathy’s flip-flopping emotional state makes her seem like she’s suffering from multiple personality disorder instead of being a woman in love trying to overcome her upbringing. Cathy’s brother doesn’t have a personality at all, just two traits: he drinks and says cruel things. That’s all he does. The others are universally arrogant and dim. Why should I care if these people’s lives are ruined?
The melodrama is full out in every scene, with pounding of fists, and posing—lots of posing. Every performance is twice as broad and loud as it should be. But then what else can an actor do when he’s given the line, “I cannot live without my life! I cannot die without my soul”?
Ah, but I shouldn’t forget that Wuthering Heights is a helpful guide in pointing out the fragility of women. Apparently, if a female ventures out in a storm, she’ll sink to the ground (for no apparent reason) and need to convalesce for weeks. Wow, I’ve been out in thundershowers before without catching a cold, but I guess women just can’t take water. God help them all if they should try to swim.
Thanks to cinematographer Gregg Toland, this overdone soap opera looks beautiful. Toland would work on Citizen Kane two years later, but his skills were apparent here. His only failure, or more likely director William Wyler’s, was with the moors, which should be intoxicating, but instead appear flat and unappealing.
No one could accuse any other part of the film of being flat, just unappealing.