Les Hauts de Hurlevent

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.

Unjustly slated on its original TV broadcast 7 years ago, this adaptation of Emily Bronte's classic Gothic romance of the Yorkshire moors has something of an Irish feel (thanks to the casting of Orla Brady as a spunky Catherine, and Robert Cavanah as a brooding and menacing Heathcliff).

This Heathcliff is not the romantic hero we saw in the Olivier-Oberon version in the 1930s; he's bitter, tiresome, grotesque, unsympathetic, and yet his great love for Cathy shines through.

Matching the novel pretty much chapter for chapter, this version does more with the last third of the book that most other attempts have - the understanding between Hareton and Catherine comes through much more strongly. It also muddies the waters slightly with respect to the conflict between Heathcliff and Hindley - although we can see why Heathcliff acts as he does, this version doesn't necessarily excuse him.

This Wuthering Heights is uncompromising, dark, and violent. This possibly contributed to its fate at the time, as the acting is largely fine (including Ken Kitson as Mr Earnshaw, Ian Shaw as Hindley, Matthew MacFadyen as Hareton, Tom Georgeson as Joseph, and Polly Hemingway as Nellie). It represents a decent attempt to get Emily Bronte's vision on film - it doesn't work, but it comes very close.

This is the most accurate version of "Wuthering Heights" I have ever seen. More people have seen the 1939 version with Laurence Olivier, but this one has its own appeal: it sticks to the story. The movie itself was sometimes painful to watch, but it's a painful story, and I still couldn't turn away. Robert Cavanaugh made a perfect Heathcliff; he was loathsome, but you also took pity on him. Orla Brady was lovely as the torn heroine (if you can call her a heroine). As a side note, the music was beautiful! It made me want to cry. I would definitely recommend seeing this film, especially if you are a Brontë fan. You won't be disappointed!

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 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.