Wuthering Heights

As many of you might know, Kate Bush wrote her song, Wuthering Heights, shortly after she and her family watched this version at home way back when.

And, intrigued, I hunted down the DVD-among all of the available versions-to see why she enjoyed it so much.

On a rainy, dreary Saturday, my wife and I hunkered down and watched all four parts (182 minutes worth). Here are my admittedly unprofessional criticisms:

The setting in the moors, while hauntingly beautiful, wasn't captured well. Everything was blurry and trembly. Yes, I understand these were 1960's production values, but this just seemed cheap and rushed. As did the residence settings and costumes.

The acting was slipshod. While the two main characters were fairly well-acted, most of the other acting was hit or miss...mostly a miss.

I won't comment on Emily Bronte's characters, though none were really likable. Another time, another place. I get that.

We sat through the entire thing but both commented later that it was pretty horrible, overall.

I'd recommend skipping this mess and just watching Kate's video.

As a collector of versions of Wuthering Heights, I was very excited to obtain this 1967 miniseries on DVD and watch it for the first time. On the whole, this is an impressively faithful rendering of the novel – although a few minor liberties might have created a stronger production. Here are my impressions of the positive and negative aspects:

Good: The black and white photography and ever-present howling wind both contribute much to the general bleakness in a way that I found appealing (the wind made it a little hard to hear the dialog at times, though!). They helped to create an atmosphere that seemed musty, suffocating and hostile (the interior scenes), and wild and unpredictable (the moors). Ian McShane is an ideal Heathcliff, dusky and moody and quick to anger. All of the actors were quite well-chosen for their parts, with Isabella, Hareton, Edgar and Linton particularly fine. Cathy is tough to get right but Angela Scoulari is convincingly childish, petty, fervent and hysterical by turns.

Bad: The acting is a little over-the-top in a manner usually found in the theater, not in a film, where subtlety can be appreciated. Even the hairpieces and mustaches seemed like stage contrivances that would be fine at a distance, but not good enough for close camera scrutiny. And Angela Scoulari is appealingly pretty but her voice was quite high-pitched and forced, as though she was trying hard to sound younger. I found myself turning the volume down at times to soften the squealing tone of it. As for the storyline, they gave us almost none of the tender moments on the moor between young Heathcliff and Cathy; one moment she and Hindley are tormenting him relentlessly, then Hindley goes to school and suddenly she and Heathcliff are inseparable. They could have easily spent a little more time establishing their unnaturally close bond, and sacrificed a little of the slower, dragging pace of the 4th part.

Well worth seeing for viewers who love the novel

Pretty faithful to the book except the actors as children were much too old as well as when they're adolescents. McShane is too short at 5 9' and the actor playing Edgar is taller and has a bigger frame. It's hard to picture Heathcliff being stronger and more threatening in the key thrown in the fire scene- which they changed. Cathy doesn't throw the key in the hottest part of the fire she just tosses it across the room. Also cut is the scene where Cathy chases after Heathcliffthe the night he runs off and she ends up very sick. Her first near death experience isn't depicted. Also Heathcliff runs off before Hareton is even born therefore he never catches him when he falls from Hindley's grasp at the top of the stairs. Scoular is one of the best Cathys I've seen. She's pretty enough and delivers her dialogue in a natural way which is hard to do with the way they talk in the book. She delivered her lines fast., how ppl naturally talk, not slow and melodramatic. I liked Anna Calder Marshall as Cathy but they didn't make her powerful or bratty enough. Timothy Dalton was the best Heathcliff in my opinion. I would say this version is worth watching. Too bad it's not in color.

Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is a literary masterpiece and a personal favourite. When it comes to adapting Wuthering Heights, it is a very difficult book to adapt like a lot of Charles Dickens and George Eliot, all of the adaptations of the it are watchable(most very good) but there are areas in almost all of them where they fall short. This 1967 Wuthering Heights is not an exception. It is for me one of the weaker adaptations of the book(the 2011 film being the weakest but it's far from bad), some scenes are choppily edited, the adaptation can feel rather stagy in spots sometimes due to the direction(at times a theatrical and for the stage feel) and occasionally the dialogue delivery, and there could have been far more of Heathcliff's motivations and how and why he came to be how he was, something that is made very clear in the book but not so apparent here. There are a lot of good things and the series does more than serviceably on its own terms. The costumes, scenery and exteriors(wasn't so crazy about some of the hair-styles, especially for Heathcliff who looked too wild) are so evocative that you really feel the cold and how cheerless everything is, and in a way that is done better than most of the adaptations. They are very dark and atmospheric, the black and white actually adds to the creepiness, and look very true to period. Also remarkably true to how Bronte describes the moors, fields, trees, food and climate, going far as to using the actual locations themselves, if there was a time machine and we went back here it would most likely be like this. The sounds of the wailing winds on the moors add to the authenticity and have a very haunting quality.

The dialogue has the feeling of Bronte's prose and delivered with passion, though interestingly sometimes in a somewhat Shakespearean-like way. The story does have omissions from the book but it is rich in atmosphere, is at least cohesive and there is a sense of passion and torment(even with Heathcliff not being developed as well as the Timothy Dalton version did) that make up for the spots of staginess. The ending is very poignant, and the image of Cathy's spectre is still terrifying by today's standards. The adaptation does a noble job with letting us empathise with the characters, very hard to do regarding adapting Wuthering Heights and it doesn't always translate as well. True the relationships between the characters are far better fleshed out in the book but there is definitely chemistry and there is at least the basic gist as to how the characters behave to each other. The acting is good, with the supporting characters(especially Hareton, Hindley and Ellen) acted in a way that is recognisable as to their novelistic counterparts. While Angela Scoular is an enchanting, feisty and pitches Cathy's spitefulness and such believably, and Ian McShane is a Heathcliff that is loathsome yet tormented played with gusto and deep feeling(even if some of his delivery is reminiscent of acting on stage, not that it is completely distracting though, just an observation). To conclude, one of the weaker versions of the book but still more than decent. 6.5/10 Bethany Cox

In recent months some generous fellow has uploaded this to Dailymotion. I was getting round to purchasing the DVD at some point which is the only way I believed this was available. However it is now online so that is a boon. However, was the wait worth it? Probably not. I have seen most other adaptations of WUthering Heights. None of them really seem to hit the spot, but my favourite is the 1978 TV version because it is a complete rendering of the novel and also it highlights the gothic aesthetic and vibe of the novel which I enjoy. This 1967 version is very similar in that regard. It is a complete rendering of the novel, it doesn't just focus on Kathy and Heathcliff's relationship, it includes all the revenge and Heathcliff's decline after Kathy leaves the story. It also also play sup the gothic aspect of the story. There is a fantastic continuous gale that blows in the background of the entire thing, giving it a gusty and cosy and dark atmosphere. It is a shame that the version on the DVD and online is only a black and white print, it would have been better to see it in its original colour, alas this version no longer exists.

The main criticism which lets the whole thing down is that the character portrayals are not nuanced enough. Heathcliff comes across as almost entirely an unliveable character, we don't see any of the other side of him. The story becomes very dark with absolute no sense of redemption. And the do change some plot elements to make it even more depressing than it is unecessarily. If I could pick and choose the best elements form all the WH adaptations we may have the perfect version, but alas, on its own this is not it.