i’ve been looking for the luis buñuel version of wuthering heights on DVD for a very long time now. it looks like you can, perhaps, pick it up from the filthy eyties, but i’m not sure on this point, and also, i digress.
i caught the last forty-five minutes of it on univision one morning and i was riveted. it captures (as you might expect) the cruelty of the book exceptionally well, probably better than any other filmed version i’ve ever seen. there was this amazing shot of cathy’s husband smiling, idly pinning a still-wriggling butterfly to a board, and that brief moment pretty much tells you all you need to know about these people.
the movie and the book always present problems for filmmakers. do you stop halfway through and make it a love story like they did with olivier and oberon (who is the most god-awful cathy i’ve ever seen) or do you make it into a mini-series and run the risk of actually having to clue people into the fact that this is not really a love story by any means, it’s a story about how death is coming for you, and the life leading up to it is hard and hurts a good deal of the time?
people seem to think of heathcliff as this tortured soul as played by sir larry or ralph fiennes, but heathcliff is a real bastard who enjoys torturing the woman he loves on her deathbed by cursing her; by digging up her corpse later in the novel (though this is a matter of some debate amongst scholars, i think it’s pretty blatantly spelled out for you in the text) and by forcing the children of the original players to go through the same hellish paces as their forebears. and catherine herself is no better, a spoiled bitch who knows that she is killing both heathcliff and herself by denying him, but she does it anyhow.
the buñuel ends halfway through (sort of) but it’s pitch perfect. it’s not a happy ending. it’s two people caught up in a hell they didn’t necessarily want or ask for, which is also a good way of approaching the book. as i look around, it seems that lots of people seem to think the buñuel sucks, but those people are in all likelihood very fucking stupid types who think the book is a true romance and that it ends with cathy’s death.
i’m wanting very badly to see this again and hopefully with subtitles before i make a definitive statement, but then again i do that sort of thing all the time with no basis for doing so except that i think i’m right and everyone else is wrong. i mean, i didn’t think it sucked even when i didn’t know what was going on, so i doubt my opinion would change overmuch. it was a harsh, unrelenting sort of movie, and the book is similarly harsh and unrelenting. that’s pleasing.
as an aside, i thought that the dalton film cribbed a lot (or tried to and failed) from the buñuel. the fact that the dalton film is a joke through and through hurts it somewhat, though timothy dalton’s ugly prettiness and willingness to overact like a maniac make it somehow enjoyable. as does michel legrand’s treacly and brilliant score. i never did understand that rough sex thing cathy and heathcliff have going in the dalton film. it sure is set to some lovely music, though. i hunted down that LP and bought it a few years back just because it’s so damned treacly and fantastic.
plus, buñuel’s title is far, far better than emily’s. ‘abismos de pasion’ is a lot more direct and to the point, i think. anyhow. i have to find it.
