What’s your favourite screen adaptation of Wuthering Heights?

[OutOnTheWilyWindyMoors]

And who is your favourite Heathcliff/Cathy?
It was Ralph Fiennes in the 1992 version but I watched the 2009 version last night and Tom hardy is now my favourite Heathcliff though I don’t believe it’s the most faithful adaptation but I do appreciate that it included the second generation.
Who is yours?

TIA

I like the 1978 BBC adaptation

Timothy Dalton version, '71 I think.

To be honest, I don't think there's ever been a particularly good adaptation. I'm old and have seen them all. I've come to the conclusion that it really can't be suitably adapted for the screen. It always loses, or at least flattens, the underlying supernatural elements and the ever present wild, untamed moors. The narrative is too complex and layered and is best conveyed through words and essentially the reader's own imagination.

The only adaptation I've liked has been the 2011 Andrea Arnold version - I think it got something right in the spirit and feeling of the book which is more than most of the other adaptations have managed. That said, I've never met anybody else who liked it so I think I am a lone voice! Apparently even Andrea Arnold doesn't like it...
My theory is that most us read Wuthering Heights as teenagers and those of us who love it have taken something from it which is very specific to who we were at the time we read it. No mere filmmaker is going to be able to recreate that for us.

I enjoyed the 1978 version, but it's a long time since I've seen it and I was a teenager when it aired.

I agree that it’s near impossible to do it justice. I read it as a teenager too and it’s possibly my favourite book of all time but in spite of that I have enjoyed the versions I have seen so far to varying degrees, even if they’ll never really live up to the book.

Absolutely agree.

You didn't elaborate, but do you know there were FIVE movie adaptations?

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls057001976/

I was just watching the 1939 Olivier/Oberon version, the only one I know well, thinking out inadequate it is. The only other one I've seen is with Fiennes/Binoche, which I liked better. The funny thing is, IMDB lists them with all different plot capsule lines.

I haven't seen them so I can't choose from all, but I did like the Tom Hardy one and I was very pleased to see Hareton and young Cathy there.

I don’t think it’s really filmable. It’s just too intense and overwrought. People often say King Lear is unactable for the same reason.

When I was 18, we did Ted Hughes’ Crow poems for A-Level and someone said Hughes reminded them of Heathcliff. We watched video recordings of him reading his poems and, tbh, I think we all fell in love with him. Ever since, he has been fixed in my mind as Heathcliff, and that’s that (still fancy him btw).

I recently watched a documentary about Ted Hughes (it was made a few years ago) it was really good. My take home from it was that he certainly had the ability to pull.

Sean Bean read his poems.

Sorry wrt WH can only remember the recent Margot Robbie adaptation.