Les Hauts de Hurlevent

I turned this on thinking we were going to get the 1992 film version with Ralph Fiennes and Juliet Binoche; instead it was a new low key TV version made for LWT and PBS with a British cast and production crew. `Wuthering Heights' has been filmed at least 10 times in English alone, there is not so much a definite version as one for successive eras, and the various versions each tell us something about the periods in which they were made. This version is not exactly post-modern, but it lacks romantic glamour. It's still a tale of wild, hopeless love but we get more of the pain than of the rapture. We also get the full story, not the truncated tale of the 1939 Hollywood version (a fine movie of its period). Here, Heathcliff and Cathy, doomed lovers, are redeemed by the happiness of their children.

The mostly unknown cast are fine and the locations fitting, though I don't think `Wuthering Heights' itself was meant to be quite so pokey; the Earnshaws were meant to be minor gentry, not peasants. Ghosts are always difficult to film convincingly but these ones are well captured. I'd like to think people will still read the book but the reality is most will just see a film version. It's a powerful story and this is a reasonable `no frills' rendering.

I came across this on DVD last weekend. I had been looking for the mini-series I had seen on TV a good 25 years or so earlier and mistook this one for it. (I had no idea who was in the mini-series; and bad eyesight prevented me from reading the small print on the box.)

Well I had no regrets. As a hater of the half told stories of a couple of previous versions I had seen, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I'll agree with everyone else that Cathy and Heathcliff aged faster than in the book and that Nelly Dean should have been younger, but that did not detract from the story.

And Heathcliff was depicted as a rogue, not a romantic hero; and Cathy was a twit. I felt no sympathy for her because she made her choice and got what she deserved.

I do wish they had done more with Cathy 2 and Linton though. Their rather grating personalities were all but lost in this version. But at least they were IN this version.

I had to watch it on a portable mini DVD player because my big telly is in for repairs, but this will be the first thing I watch when I get it back.

Wuthering Heights is one of the literary masterpieces with complex characters(especially Heathcliff, a character that makes Mr Rochester, another tormented character, seem tame in comparison) and a truly dark, moving story that is full to the brim with atmosphere. Like the work of Charles Dickens and George Eliot as examples Wuthering Heights is one of the most difficult books to adapt and is almost unfilmable as well. Every adaptation of Wuthering Heights is worth the look though some work better than others. This was a fine version of Wuthering Heights, along with the Laurence Olivier film it is the best adaptation. True it could have done with a longer length especially for a book as lengthy and complex as Wuthering Heights, and the sections with the youngsters seemed on the rushed side(they also age a bit too quickly). It is however one of- perhaps THE- most faithful adaptation, there are omissions of course as you'd expect from a film compressed into a shorter running time but in detail and spirit with all the major details and characters intact it is to the extent that if she were alive Emily Bronte herself would recognise it. The adaptation is even better on its own, the locations are breath-taking and remarkably vivid in a way where you can literally smell and feel the atmosphere being conveyed.

The photography is not too flashy or studio-bound, it has a sense of freedom but allows the story to resonate. While the costumes are richly evocative, if you had a time machine and had travelled to this period it is very likely to be as rendered here. The music score is hauntingly beautiful and melancholic, particularly at the end and the ending here is poignant beyond words (none of the other adaptations of the book have done it as emotionally as here). The writing is very thoughtfully adapted with a great deal of intimacy and very true to Bronte's prose, and the story is still the dark, brooding and passionate tale of the book with as said already the major scenes all here and with the impact they should. The direction is strong throughout as is the acting. Not all the actors are age-appropriate but for me the performances themselves are what matter more and the adaptation delivers on that front. Robert Cavannah is a Heathcliff that is brutish and brooding yet tormented and pained, rightfully allowing us to be terrified of Heathcliff and later go on to pity him too. Orla Brady is a spirited and feisty Cathy, also very affecting, her delirium scene is beautifully played and genuinely disturbing. Matthew McFadyen's Hareton is very charming, while Crispin Bonham-Carter's Edgar is very well-read and humane in a role that can easily be weak and the Hindley of Ian Shaw is appropriately tragic, a tormenter at first but later he is almost(if not quite to that extent) as pained as Heathcliff. Polly Hemmingway and Tom Georgeson are equally engaging. Overall, one of the better Wuthering Heights adaptations and recommended. 9/10 Bethany Cox

I find that this 1998 Masterpiece theater TV version follows the novel of the same name pretty faithfully. One who has never read the novel may find the action moving too quickly, so that the flow of the movie may seem slightly abrupt or choppy. However, the movie is only 2 hours long, which is probably why they had to cut out parts of the book and take some liberties with ages and certain details. That does not detract too much from the enjoyment of this movie, which despite its choppiness, has excellent acting, beautiful cinematography (the landscapes are breathtaking), and a wonderfully wrought out, bitter plot which focuses on three generations of two families who are intimately interlocked with each other. Heathcliff definitely comes off as the cruel, embittered man he is in the book, and it's great to see a TV movie capture the personalities of all the characters so well. Highly recommended movie.

A wonderful, faithful adaptation, the 1998 version of Wuthering Heights captures all the romance, brutality and passion of the novel. Orla Brady is stunning as Cathy and truly captures the character, particularly towards the end of the story. Robert Cavanah is also wonderful as Heathcliff, the story's complex (and challenging to play, I'm sure) antihero. The rest of the performances are emotionally charged as well, and no one seems to fall short. One of the great things about this story is how real and complex its characters are. No one is totally angelic or demonic, -good people are driven to do terrible things, and the worst of people love more passionately than all the others. It is a dark, beautiful story, filled with romance and suffering. For fans of the novel, this is the most faithful adaptation I have found, and for those of you who have not read the book, it is a beautiful, moving film.