Which Wuthering Heights should I watch?

[waltzingparrot]

Never read the book or seen it on screen. So many TV and film adaptations 🤔

Which adaptation do you think is the best?
Is it close to the book?

I liked the Cliff Richard version 😆

Read the book first - no one is a nice character and then it will be interesting to see how you feel about them based on the films portrayal. The book goes on for much longer too.

I did find the book hard to get into initially but was pleased I stuck with it.

But they both sanitise and alter the novels significantly. I mean, for obvious reasons, because of the Hays Code.

The 1939 Wuthering Heights turns it into a much more conventional love story (the novel never suggests the relationship between Cathy and her foster-brother is in any way a romantic one) and only adapts about half the novel, leaving out the second generation of characters entirely. Plus ‘Yorkshire’ looks like California, as that’s where the outdoor scenes were filmed.

And the 1940 Rebecca, again because of the Hays code, which stipulated that a film could not seem to condone or justify murder, had to change maybe the single most important plot point of the novel. (But the more recent adaptation with Armie Hammer and Lily James seemed to have been made by someone who’d misunderstood the novel entirely…)

The best adaptation I’ve seen of WH is certainly the Andrea Arnold 2011 one — she gets the grim, gritty flavour of the novel, how cold and wet and hungry and isolated and claustrophobic a world it is, but she also leaves out the second generation.

I’m not sure either novel is filmable! Rebecca relies so much on an unreliable narrator whose nemesis has been dead for years — the only versions of Rebecca we get are indirectly, from other people, either devoted or damning, and it would completely lessen the power of her ‘haunting’ if we put a face to her by having flashbacks…”

Read WH, OP. It’s a great novel. Just don’t decide it’s crap because it’s ’not romantic’. It’s definitely not romantic.

Ralph Fiennes' version is by far the best and I will die on this hill. It's one of my top 3 films.

Thanks to this thread 😆

Honestly OP, it's a beautifully-written book.

Have you seen the 1970 version, with Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall?

That may have been the best of the versions you have seen, most of which are pretty bad. Binoche was too old for the role, and her accent was unsuitable, and Ralph was rocking a ridiculous wig.

The 1939 version directed by the great William Wyler. There's never been a better one, not by a long shot.

Loved WH and have never been satisfied by any of the adaptations as yet. I think their dynamic is too complex to capture on film, unless you do an after watershed tv series that gets into the weeds of it.

My wholly unpopular guilty pleasure is the far more readable (but cheesy) sequel......😁

www.goodreads.com/book/show/41137449

Yes. I mean, they’re both astonishing actors (I think this was Ralph Fiennes’ first film role, or almost?), but both Cathy and Catherine II are supposed to be late 18thc Yorkshire girls who have never stirred more than a few miles from their birthplace, so a pronounced French accent (and in both mother and daughter!) is really jarring. And while I do commend the film for being one of the only adaptations to cover the second generation and Heathcliff’s revenge, it also flags up the problems of doing it, with Juliette Binoche donning a (bad) wig to play her own daughter in the second part.

People who read the novel after seeing most adaptations are often taken aback at how early in the novel Cathy dies, pretty much exactly half way through.

It's a strange, dark, intense book - a love story in many layers but not a typical romance.
Ralph Fiennes is the only actor to have got close. All of the adaptations are pretty dire.

I love the book and read it a number of times but I’ve never watched an adaptation because I can’t imagine any could improve on the book. Same with Jane Eyre. I’m opposite with Jane Austin though, don’t love her books but quite like the adaptations.

I did Wuthering Heights for both O and A Level so I've read it umpteen times, including a reread as an adult, and my advice is don't bother.

But if you really must, then the 1970 Timothy Dalton version is the one to go for because a) nobody has ever been more darkly handsome than the young Timothy Dalton, almost enough to make that world class shit Heathcliff attractive and b) it hacks out the second half, which everyone forgets about for a reason, and has a vastly superior ending.

A typical scene from Wuthering Heights includes our young protagonists finding a birds nest and putting a blanket on top of it to smother the tiny chicks. You had to make your own entertainment in 19th century Yorkshire.

You can read Wuthering Heights or watch some version of Blithering Heights but it should be considered a violation of advertising standards to market any of the adaptations as Wuthering.

It’s a challenging read: when you’re ploughing through Joseph’s barely comprehensible mean spirited spewings that you can really feel the cold, miserable, grim atmosphere and a childhood shaped by neglect, abuse and religious bigotry that produces Heathcliff the psychopath and Catherine’s deeply divided personality.

Agreed.

I still would, though.

Well, I don’t think anyone could claim that the Andrea Arnold adaptation misrepresents Heathcliff as attractive and romantic. I mean, you can entirely see why the Lintons throw him out when he and Cathy are caught by their watchdog, given that he addresses them as ‘Cunts!’ and he has sex with Cathy’s corpse…

Not sure Margot Robbie is quite right for Cathy and doesn't Cathy die aged about 20? I dont know if there are any teenage actresses who can carry off the intensity of the role though.

Interestingly, Margot's double Emma Mackey played Emily Brontë in Emily a few years ago and was very good.

I may need to knuckle down and read this book but I feel concerned that I’m too delicate for a full portrayal of Heathcliff and everyone’s else’s cruelty.

(plot spoilers if you haven't read it yet)
He doesn't have sex with her corpse. He does dig up her bones. To say goodbye which he was denied when she was dying.
Heathcliffe is an intriguing character. I think if you enjoy the book though, you see the balance in why he is cruel sometimes. He's been the victim of abuse as well as the abuser - he tells his wife (not Cathy) that he is cruel and unpleasant and then she's surprised when he is cruel and unpleasant...
He tries to be abusive to Hareton and mostly fails and ends up loving the son of the person who has been insufferably malicious to him. He doesn't prevent the next generation from finding happiness even though it doesn't serve his revenge agenda.
He's much more than a comic book villain and that's why he is also attractive.

He doesn't have sex with her corpse. He does dig up her bones. To say goodbye which he was denied when she was dying.

She's very freshly buried when he digs her up.

Hmm. I thought he dug her up shortly before he dies, which is many years later. Might have to re-read it!

Just checked in with my DD who has read this recently - he tries and fails to get the coffin open shortly after she dies, he also feels her presence at that point so stops. He does dig up the grave again, but many years later by which time she would be bones. So I would argue that sure, digging up a grave (twice) is pretty weird but I don't think he tries to have sex with her corpse.

Wasn’t the pp saying that in one of the film versions he has sex with her corpse? Not in the book. I don’t know though as I haven’t seen the adaptation in question (Andrea Arnold version).

I don’t know if I’m the only one but in my mind when I first read the book, Cathy was played by a young Kate Bush - and I’ve never been able to imagine her as anyone else.

Read the book. It really doesn't lend itself well to the screen. My favourite Bronte book.

I quite like the 2009 one with Tom Hardy