Les Hauts de Hurlevent

The 1970 version of Wuthering Heights is the best version of the novel on film. Restrained, realistic, it did not go "over the top" emotionally like the 1939 one. Timithy Dalton' s portrayal of Heathcliff is very passionate but is more of a real person instead of just a romantic idel. Samuel J. Arkoff died yesterday. He made a lot of low budget exploitation pictures in the fifties and sixties.

They were fun and not demeaning like the films of today. In 1970 he made this very serious film and was never really given the publicity or the credit he deserved.

My mother had seen this movie in theaters as a girl and, since then, has always commented on how "romantic and secretly sexy" Timothy Dalton and the picture were. I recently saw the film for the first time and could not agree with her more. I was impelled to read the book afterwards and did so in 7.5 hours! I couldn't put it down! The movie was strikingly different from the book but was still wonderful. Dalton and Calder-Marshall shine in their roles. The camera-work is excellent but not even the glorious English moors can distract us from the love of Heathcliff and Cathy. While most likely a "chick flick," this movie is to be enjoyed by all.

Timothy Dalton plays Heathcliff as no one before or since has played him. He is passionate and brooding, cruel and tender. His bright eyes pierce through Cathy's soul, and our own, when he returns from his wanderings to find her married to Edgar Linton.

The rest of the cast is also well-chosen. Anna Calder-Marshall, not as conventionally beautiful as other Cathy's have been, nonetheless, portrays the charisma of the character and her possessive, obsessive personality with brilliant accuracy. Ian Ogilvy as Edgar is just the right touch of gentle lover and aristocratic snob, so that it is believable that Cathy might actually fall for him, on the surface at any rate.

This was Mr. Dalton's first foray into the gothic depths of the Bronte sisters' works. His second, as Mr. Rochester in the fine BBC version (1985) of Jane Eyre, was just as compelling. Now if he were just a few inches shorter, we could get him to play the French teacher in a movie of Villette!!

OK - first let me say that there has been a lot of talk about this version vs the 1992 version with Fiennes and Binoche. In fact, both productions made one fundamental mistake which would have otherwise rendered each version near perfect - they cast the wrong female leads. Calder-Marshall is far too posh for Cathy. My goodness me though - Dalton is perfect as Heathcliffe. I'm going to put this down to the make up department but it's actually hard to believe that Calder-Marshall is about 3 years younger than him. I actually think she is a good actress, but certainly miscast as Cathy. What really galls me though is the screenplay which takes such liberties with the story, much of which is simply left out and a completely different ending formulated. The last time I felt so cheated was when I watched Captain Corelli's Mandolin! Bottom line - a great example of a real missed opportunity to be the definitive version...

Several people have mentioned the music from this film, and for good reason. This was one of a handful of extraordinary scores by the largely forgotten Michel Legrand (THREE MUSKATEER 1974; SUMMER OF '42, BRIAN'S SONG, among others), and is one of my favorite twenty or so film scores ever. This movie, well-photographed as it was, simply reeks of Gothic atmosphere in great part because of this music. Passionate, sensual, beautiful, and tremendously dramatic, it was even released as a record album in 1970 by the short-lived American International Records Label and, unfortunately, has never been made available on CD. It would be worth a purchase on eBay! I also feel that, while Dalton as Heathcliff is by no means in the same acting league as Sir Laurence Olivier, his passion for Calder-Marshall (who is less effective as Cathy than was Merle Oberon) is nonetheless more urgent and less studied than Oliver's was in the '39 version.

I enjoy the original film for its moody black and white imagery and its fine romantic score (by Alfred Newman, also not available on CD); but, though it's admittedly a lesser film, by a small margin I prefer this 1970 take which, without Legrand's evocative scoring, would probably have been a bust.