Romantic Backlash

By Stefan Kanfer

"Heathcliff . . . Heeeeathcliff . . ."

When the first sound version of Wuthering Heights was filmed in 1939, that wail seemed to echo back to the grave of Emily Bronte herself. The latest remake seems to echo back to 1939. The comparison is seldom flattering. In the earlier film Laurence Olivier constructed the role of Heathcliff like a man building a castle. Timothy Dalton, who played the foppish Prince Rupert in Cromwell, now seems less landlord than tenant. He self-consciously melts and struts, breathing hard to signify passion, curling his lip to show contempt.

Director Robert Fuest is quite a comedown from original Director William Wyler, then hitting his stride. Wyler worked against the faintly ridiculous aspects of the plot. Fuest emphasizes them: the young bastard Heathcliff finds a soul mate in Cathy, who swears "I am Heath-cliff." Grown to wild manhood, he is thrust out of the ancestral digs, Wuthering Heights, by its owner Hindley. Cathy is pledged to another; Heathcliff goes abroad and returns a sudden gentleman of fortune. At the gaming table he wins most of the estate from the ruined Hindley, but too late. Cathy, doomed to die in childbirth, curses him. Within hours of her funeral, Heathcliff meets his own fate, perishing on the hills where the lovers once swore eternal fealty.

Wuthering Heights II is not without its redeeming factors. The principal one is Anna Calder-Marshall, 23, a British actress who won an American Emmy in 1969 for a TV presentation of Male of the Species. As Cathy, she lends her role a caste of palpable tragedy and dignity. Like virtually all star-crossed 19th century heroines, Cathy is an example of cloaked sexuality. Calder-Marshall makes that character an embodiment of what Virginia Woolf saw as "a struggle, half thwarted but of superb conviction." Though Fuest seems to leave his players to their own devices, he has a fine camera eye. The novel suggests a suite of woodcuts; the earlier film was, appropriately, black-and-white gothic. Though this Wuthering Heights is in color, it is suggestive of death and transfiguration. The Yorkshire landscape has never seemed so malignant; filters block sunlight so that skies gleam while grounds are plunged in darkness, recalling the paintings of Magritte.

Seldom does the film equal its pictorial quality. But perhaps Wuthering Heights was, like its principals, frustrated from the start. Its distributors, American International Pictures, saw it as "a youth-oriented picture," suggesting groovy moors and Now people suffering Then hang-ups. Its significance is, finally, not aesthetic but historic. AIP, former king of motorcycle and beach-blanket flicks, has become a leader of the romantic backlash. In one fell swipe, it has disavowed its sleazy origins, bypassed the grind houses and landed the distributors' dream. Wuthering Heights will open at the ultimate Temple of Memory, Radio City Music Hall, sandwiched between an act called "The Educated Dogs" and a musical salute to Stephen Foster. Next on the AIP production schedule: remakes of A Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserables.

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