Product Description

CATHY EARNSHAW IS HEATHCLIFF'S FOSTER SISTER: MORE THAN THAT, SHE IS HIS OTHER HALF. WHEN FORCES WITHIN AND WITHOUT TEAR THEM APART.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4609 in DVD
• Brand: PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 2003-12-02
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 105 minutes

Amazon.com
Peter Kosminsky's 1992 adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights goes to the extreme of casting Sinéad O'Connor in a brief bit as Brontë herself, but the film still doesn't approach the accomplishment of William Wyler's classic 1939 production (with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon) or subsequent versions by Luis Buñuel and Robert Fuest. That doesn't make it unwatchable, however: it still offers The English Patient costars Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche as doomed lovers Heathcliff and Cathy. Binoche is a bit washed-out, but Fiennes makes a strong impression as the rejected laborer who makes his fortune and exacts a vengeance. Unlike Wyler's film, this one covers all the chapters of Brontë's book, but it is sodden with misery and lacks all grace. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

An unforgettable rendition of this classic
I was amazed when I read that this British production was not well received upon its release in 1992. The highly talented pair of Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes play the doomed Cathy and Heathcliff, supported by the equally fine Janet McTeer as Ellen Dean. The performances are exemplary--Fiennes' performance is said to have inspired Steven Spielberg to cast him as the Nazi commandant in "Schindler's List." And a diabolical Heathcliff he is, indeed--Fiennes plays this intense role faithful to Emily Bronte's original character. He is tormented, sadistic, manipulative, ruthless and brutal--and nonetheless hypnotically sexual and alluring. This is the genuine Heathcliff, with all apologies to the brilliant Laurence Olivier, who portrayed Heathcliff as a much more sympathetic character. Juliette Binoche plays both Cathy and Cathy's daughter by the ineffectual Edgar Linton, and brings great depth and appeal to both roles. The scenes of the bleak Yorkshire moors, and the haunting, shadowy quality of the Wuthering Heights house, lend this film a truly Gothic atmosphere. A jarring note is the casting of Sinead O'Connor (in a wig) as Emily Bronte, but this is a minor flaw. I found this version every bit as good as the original 1939 classic, to which this film has been unfairly compared. It is much more faithful to the brooding, doomed quality of the book. The scenes acted by Fiennes as the grief-stricken Heathcliff just after Cathy's death are alone worth the price of the film. For the many fans of these two brilliant actors, and of Bronte's novel, this film is well worth seeing. END

A breakout performance
Every once in a while, I encounter an actor who, although playing a familiar character, seems to re-invent it and show details of it that have never before been displayed. Such is Ralph Fiennes portrayal of Heathcliff in this film. I was not at all surprised that Spielberg chose him for "Schindler's List" after watching this film--Fiennes' Heathcliff is almost wholly unsympathetic (he is a wife---and child-- abuser) but Fiennes lets us know the inner heartbreak that drives Heathcliff to such meanness. Previous Heathcliffs have been more stock romantic leads--the original Moody Guys a' la' James Dean.

I can't really understand the extreme negativity of the "official" reviews--it appears that the movie, as is the novel, its characters, the author, and her entire family is a little off-center and out of the mainstream. The Brontes were a bunch of weird and wild kids in a weird and wild part of the world, and "Wuthering Heights" is a weird and wild book--not a proper Victorian romance, as other reviewers have suggested. Comparing Emily Bronte to Jane Austen is like comparing William Faulkner to John Grisham because they are both from Mississippi. None of Austen's characters could survive in Bronte's Yorkshire, and the Brontes would probably be unwelcome in Austen's stately Hampshire homes.

I,too, liked this book as a teenager, and now have the opportunity to teach it to high schoolers,and I must say my students generally prefer this novel and this film treatment to most others in British Literature. The film does have its flaws--but not enough to make it unwatchable, and having spent a wild, rainy weekend in the Bronte's hometown of Haworth, Yorkshire, I do believe the film aptly captures the mood of that forbidding place.

As for the choice of Sinead O'Connor to play Emily "framing" the "frame story"-- all I can guess is that she does bear a passing resemblance to the portrait of Charlotte Bronte that hangs over my computer (great, big, intense eyes). Plus the Brontes were ethnically Irish.

Watch this film to help your English lit grade, to observe a truly artful nuanced acting performance, to enjoy some beautiful scenery, or just enjoy a weepy gothic romance. Any way you look at it, it can't possibly be a waste of time.

Fidelity to the Novel is Not Necessarily a Virtue
Peter's Kosminsky's version of Emily Bronte's WUTHERING HEIGHTS is true to the angst-ridden torment that is Heathcliff's life. In the 1939 version, Heathcliff was played by Sir Lawrence Olivier in a subdued and sympathetic way. In this 1992 adaption, Heathcliff is Ralph Fiennes, who plays his character as more sadistic than tormented. Comparisons to Olivier are both unfortunate and illuminating. Olivier was cruel toward Catherine and Hindley, but his cruelty was tightly focused. Fiennes' cruelty is more generalized, almost as if he is lashing out at the world of which Catherine and Hindley are but symbols. Fiennes in his animus is so over the top that he very quickly loses the sympathy of the viewer. How one sees the development of Heathcliff goes a long way toward determining how one sees the novel or the film. In the novel, Bronte has pages aplenty to prepare the reader for the many and extended time jumps to account for the rounding of Heathcliff, Catherine, and others. In the 1939 film, some judicious editing allowed the excising of extraneous material after the death of Catherine, that allowed the focus of that film to remain pure and undiluted. Unfortunately, the 1992 version is so faithful to the novel that the horrendous nature of Heathcliff's inner demons remain at the forefront at all times. Unlike Bronte, director Kosminsky does not have the luxury to gradually permit a believable segue from one plot complication to another. What he does show are confusing time shifts, lack of character development (especially with Hindley and Hareton), and a bottled-up sense of agida that has no place to go to but implode. Juliet Binoche in a double role of Catherine and Cathy is irritatingly whiny and uncertain of her feelings and motivations. The primary fault of the 1992 WUTHERING HEIGHTS is that it tries too hard to replicate totally in less than two hours what Emily Bronte more successfully accomplished in nearly three hundred pages.