Three and a half hours of watching time. Two hundred and ten minutes of absorbing movie-making. It was done as a miniseries for TV and I got it in two CD's. In Italian. Excellent screen version of the Emily Brontë's classic "Wuthering Heights". Since they disposed of all that time, the book was respected almost to the last comma. Everything is top notch in this film, the director, the actors, the photography, the sets, the costumes, etc.
Anita Caprioli as the main character is perfect, looking like a young Elizabeth Taylor, fragile as a white orchid with a flawless skin and a romantic profile, very beautiful indeed and totally credible in period costume.
Same goes for the main male character, the actor Alessio Boni, with a very powerful magnetic presence and very handsome face, but we'll be unjust to the rest of the cast if we don't mention them as excellent performers too.
Franco Castellano, as the villain is perfect and so is Winter Ave Zoli as the naive adolescent sadly misguided by her inexperience in her first crush. The first half hour of this film is a bit disappointing because it shows too openly its TV destination, but without realizing it, one gets sucked into the story and the improvement is continuous, until one is fully taken and fascinated by this excellent classic, several times adapted for the screen in Hollywood and in Europe throughout the decades.
Of course this is the type of hyper romantic love story that could be ridiculous if done in modern dress, since the moral codes, the social restrictions, the women position in society are as obsolete as the hooped skirts and the parasols of that period.
But getting into the mood of the time and accepting its rules --believing in ghosts, etc.-- this film is terribly moving and entertaining.
