Les hauts de Hurlevent

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.

Briefly, my comments are directed to those who know the 1939 movie "Wuthering Heights", the novel "Wuthering Heights", and the work of Luis Bunuel. I love the novel. I love its intensity. I love its passion. I love its brutality. I love its carnal passion and its carnal brutality. Yet the 1939 Wylder version is practically sterile. Bunuel brings alive that passion and brutality. Frankly, Wylder's Wuthering Heights is embarrassed by Bunuel's when it comes to capturing the essentials of Bronte's novel. In my opinion, this fact is a reflection of the limitations put on 1930's Hollywood directors by studios looking to sell movies to a society that was unbending in its unwillingness to allow artists to truly stretch the art of film. Hollywood was slow to come around in expressing the same sexual and violent expressions that has always been present in literature from which it found its inspiration. As you might know, Bunuel has never let anything hold back his artistic expression. And in his version of Bronte's novel he takes full hold the emotion that Bronte intended us to feel.

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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.

Like most of Bunuel's works, the main (and also the most interesting) layer of this film is the mental one. Yes, there are lots of dialogs, but it can be easily watched without hearing a word, due to Bunuel incredible talent of telling stories, feelings, fears, desires and lust exclusively through images. Only a bunch of directors are capable of achieving such a purity in visualization.

Abismos de pasiòn is a very classical story, filtered through Bunuel's will to further inspect desire (both sexual and mental). Alejandro is clearly ruled by his passion and instincts; characteristic which is praised by Bunuel, envying it.

Abismos de pasión (1954) is Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, directed and co-scripted by Luis Buñuel.

This film was produced in Mexico, where Buñuel lived for 20 years as an exile from Franco's Spain. Believe it or not, the film works. Colonial Mexico in 1800 probably had many similarities to the rigid, socially conscious society of England at the same period. Buñuel's film is set in rural Mexico, in an region as isolated as the English moors.

Jorge Mistral plays Alejandro (Heathcliff), Irasema Dilián plays Catalina (Catherine), and Ernesto Alonso is Eduardo (Edgar). These actors were apparently popular Mexican stars of the time, and they play their roles with a ferocious intensity that fits Brontë's writing style.

The whole effort has an over-the-top quality to it, but, when you think about it, so does Wuthering Heights. Abismos de pasión isn't a film for everyone, but it's a must for Buñuel buffs.