Les hauts de Hurlevent

Believe or not, this is the best adaptation of the marvelous and romantic story written by Emily Brontë in the Yorkshire Moors! Of course there are more faithful to the letter of the novel in those series made by the BBC long ago, but not the recent ones. The line story is so complicated that is very difficult for a movie to cover it fully. It's hardly believable that this Mexican movie does it so well as to be the best film on the subject, but that is the miracle of Art,

It doesn't belong to a place, but to all places, nor to a particular language, but to all languages. Buñuel's genius operates the miracle, aided by his excellent cast and team. This is the one version that captures the roots of Cathy's and Heathcliff's deep and contradictory emotions, the passions, the love and hate they shared and suffered, being all of them doomed to be unhappy in this world and hoping to be redeemed and united in the other. Placed in Mexico, black and white excellent photography, with a believable and intense cast, and a passionate, yet sometimes ironic direction, you must not judge before watching it. It is a great movie!

A 1954 Mexican feature film version of Emily Brontë's literary classic ,transfering the romantic tragedy from the Yorkshire Moors to the haciendas and farmland of Mexico. Alejandro returns to his adopted home to find the love of his life Catalina has married the wealthy Eduardo. This sets in motion a series of tragic events. Director Luis Bunuel's version of the tale is a simplified adaptation of the original source material ,and not as good as the 1930s film version with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon ,partly due to not being able to empathise as much with the characters in this film. It's just as theme rich as other versions ,dealing with cruelty ,pride ,jealousy and hatred ,and the legacy of cruel exploitation ,inhumanity ,and lack of love. Featuring several Bunuelisms ,and a prowler who hangs about in the dark and rain outside and smashes through windows and doors ,this is a film about the pain of passion.

I just discovered, watched and reviewed this movie all in one day! I like the way Bunuel took the story of "Wuthering Heights" and made it his own, and I for one didn't miss the (drab and depressing) moors. This version went more for melodrama than a gothic atmosphere, and I enjoyed the difference. In this rendition, Catalina and Alejandro were separated more through family interference than her desire to join the world of the upper class, which makes her more sympathetic than Cathy. I can't say I approve of the way Alejandro treated Isabella, but his attitude seemed less cold and harsh than that of Heathcliff, at least to me.

The last scene was really powerful!

I could have done without all those dead butterflies, however.

11 reviews so far. Only.

You have to love Shakespeare, as they say, for having written the whole breadth of human characteristics in his pieces. Without any need to actually add any more.

You also have to love Bunuel for having done some movies that need nothing to be added, as long as they and humanity exist. This is the one on, at least, Wuthering Heights. Or, make it the impossible love.

The Spanish sense for drama, here shot in Mexico, add to the story of a man returning after years of absence to his one and only love. And does she still love him! But then, we are at the hands of Bunuel! Society kicks in with all rules, traditions, regulations, customs, boredom. And in the end, and this is what Bunuel develops so splendidly, all breaks down. And what we see, observe, is the path to this breakdown. Overwhelming love prevails through to the end, but remains unfulfilled. No, this is not a spoiler, we've known this from the book of the Brontés. Though, here we can watch its distillation, so to say, the essence.

Bunuel, as always, in principle loves all human beings around him, and yet brings out to the open all their inner limitations, frustrations, if not to say weirdness.

From its early scenes, when Alejandro returns and kind of invades the household of his by now married and pregnant love, an almost film-noir-like darkness with regular thunderstorms and scenes covered in rain, the futility of the setting becomes obvious. And, Bunuel-like, there are no heroes. Neither of the main personage is or becomes heroic.

Would I be any be better? I don't think so. Bunuel was a great psychiatrist, so to say, that he could see through all of us, and yet not despise us. Like in this movie. With minor exceptions, there is no principally bad person. They just all fell into a huge mixer and came out worse than they were in the beginning.

Unlike William Wyler's movie in which Sir OlIvier shone as Heathcliff, Luis Bunuel 's adaptation of Emily Bronte's masterwork does not show Heathcliff's and Cathy's first years ;it begins when Catalina ( Catherine.) has married Eduardo (Edgar) and is pregnant by him ; the return of a wealthy Alejandro (Heathcliff )rekindles a passion that destroys everything ,knows no bounds ; they are characters of flesh and blood,following their instinct , with a love which verges on hate ; in direct contrast with that is Eduardo 's bourgeois love ,as alive as his collection of butterflies .

Bunuel's touch can be felt in this symbolism : one finds it again in Isabel's arrival in the lugubrious Alejandro's mansion -particularly faithful to the book-,where Riccardo (Hareton) catches a fly and gives it to a spider ; a pagan wedding even though he took place in the church ,even sacrilege :"I love Alejandro more than my soul"says Catalina before a shocked servant invoking Jesus and Maria ; "you'll awake in Hell " says Alejandro to Catalina. The ending takes amour fou to new limits , to the accents of Wagnerian music.

The moor -which Wyler filmed in studio - is replaced by the Mexican landscapes ,but it does not matter for the pictures are visually stunning ; the lovers' past is told in a very succint style. Bunuel focuses on lovers carried away by passion,which led them to cruelty toward the others : and eventually aren't the living in the tomb?