A number of years ago a mystery novel was published that has, as it's secret, the discovery of the complete manuscript of a second novel by Emily Bronte. Unfortunately nothing like that has ever surfaced, so we are stuck with only one book penned by her. If that one book was THE PROFESSOR or SHIRLEY (Charlotte's two least good novels),Emily would long ago have been forgotten, and we would see more interest in her younger sister Anne. But Emily left us WUTHERING HEIGHTS. It is rare for a writer to turn out such a stunning masterpiece only once and never write anything again.

JANE EYRE is a well structured organized novel, and it has passions revealed. As I have mentioned elsewhere it is a novel where the heroine was in a lowly position and dared to love her employer (something shocking in 1847). But WUTHERING HEIGHTS has a similar story but with more symbolic raw power. Here it is not a female servant loving her master but a male (of gypsy heritage) who loves and is loved by the daughter of his patron. But the patron dies, and his jealous son treats the gypsy as the lowliest of servants. How the gypsy boy finds his love seemingly rejected, and how he eventually lives only for revenge against those he feels wronged him becomes the meat of the plot here. And all the sturm und drang is played out against the wild moors with their hints of sexual freedom.

It was powerful stuff in 1847 Victorian England, and it remains really powerful today. If Bronte could not write anything else due to her early death, this novel still enshrined her among the great novelists.

The only element of the plot that is lost is Hindley's family. He has a wife briefly in the novel (that is how he has a son named Hareton that Heathcliff torments in his revenge). The wife, named Frances, dies soon after giving birth. No mention of her, nor of Hareton and young Cathy and Heathcliff's son by Isabelle called Linton. Possibly, like the streamlining of the 1944 JANE EYRE by dropping the Rivers from the story, this was just as well.

Olivier had the Byronic good looks (of a dark, saturnine type) that fit the part of the tormented, devilish Heathcliff. And Merle Oberon (who had already appeared opposite Olivier in THE DIVORCE OF LADY X) was given her best part as the confused, doomed Cathy: she loves Heathcliff (as she tells Nellie - Flora Robson) but she has a willingness to take up with Edgar (David Niven) because he is civilized, and caring when she is injured, and she thinks Heathcliff deserted her. Niven really had his first meaty dramatic role as Edgar, and Geraldine Fitzgerald was quite good as the sadly disillusioned Isabel (who loved not wisely but too well).

The stark cinematography by Gregg Toland, and direction by William Wyler makes this the best film made of any of the Bronte novels to date.

I do consider Wuthering Heights to be one of the greatest literary masterpieces, so moving and powerful at the same time. And this 1939 version is the best version by a long way, in that I cannot think of many things, if anything, against it. For one thing it is well cast, it doesn't try too hard and it have the spirit of the book, which is very difficult to adapt because of the many details and the complex characters and normally I'd say it needs a mini-series to do it justice. But this film proves for me that a book like Wuthering Heights can work with the right mood and cast. And it succeeds in every way. The cinematography is simply wonderful, Wuthering Heights(in my opinion) has to have some of the best cinematography of any movie from the 30s. This is especially true of the Moors, every bit as mysterious and haunting as they should be. Albert Newman's score is one of the best, perhaps even the best, of his career, incredibly atmospheric with the Moors and Cathy's theme is just as good. The costumes and sets are suitably sumptuous, the story is still complex and moving, the pace never felt rushed or dull to me and the dialogue really sticks in your head and has a sweeping feel("I cannot live without my life! I cannot die without my soul!"). The acting is just as great. The support cast consist of David Niven and Geraldine Fitzgerald's long-suffering Edgar and Isabella, Donald Crisp's ever-reliable Dr Kenneth, Hugh Williams' understated Hinley and especially the empathetic Ellen of Flora Robson, serving as narrator of the story, and all do sterling jobs. But a Wuthering Heights adaptation isn't the same without mentioning the leads. Merle Oberon is an exotic Cathy, playing the character's greed and selfishness to a hilt. The death scene was incredibly chilling and stayed with me a long while after watching. Even better is the wild(if not animalistic) and smouldering(so much so that if there was an award for best smouldering for an actor/actress, Olivier would have gotten it) Heathcliff of Laurence Olivier, who also gets the brooding and bitter nature of the character just right. So in conclusion, fantastic and the best version. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Before I wrote this review I talked to someone else who also had done a review of this film here. Young Heathcliff is brought to the Yorkshire moors by Cecil Kellaway who was the father of Merle Oberon and Hugh Williams. He seemed to be dropped into the Earnshaw family without any rhyme or reason. Kellaway finds the scruffy kid on the streets of Liverpool and brings him back to the family estate in Yorkshire. I asked if in fact Emily Bronte wrote more of this than what we saw. The answer was no. That in itself was curious because the version we see here was quite condensed from the original story.

Still enough of Wuthering Heights survives on the screen to tell Emily Bronte's tale of lost love that cannot be because of class distinction. Merle Oberon is a beautiful and fetching Kathy who grows up with scruffy young Heathcliff and she becomes his soul-mate. Yet class being what it was and to some extent still is, she can't and/or won't marry him. He's just the stable-boy, and her brother is jealous of him and his presence.

One piece of snobbery becomes too much and Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff leaves as he promised for good to make fame and fortune. That was a common theme in English literature, used by Dickens among others as well as Emily Bronte here. It was an indirect attack on the class system of Europe, let alone the United Kingdom. The opportunities are in the new world and the colonies.

Olivier comes back, but the love and tender feelings he did possess for Oberon are replaced by a brooding vengeance seeking man. He successfully humbles the people that snubbed him, but at a terrible cost to his psyche.

Laurence Oliver came back to America after a previous visit to Hollywood where he didn't set the world on fire. His trip was almost an afterthought, his wife Vivien Leigh was to be Scarlett O'Hara, so he signed to do Wuthering Heights at the same time under Sam Goldwyn with William Wyler directing.

Though he may have been inpatient with William Wyler's deliberate style of movie-making, he credited Wyler with being the first director who really taught him the difference between acting for the stage and for the screen. Olivier got the first of his Oscar nominations for Best Actor and he was up for that award with Clark Gable for Gone With the Wind, James Stewart for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Mickey Rooney for Babes in Arms. They all went down to Robert Donat in Goodbye Mr. Chips.

Wuthering Heights took one Oscar home, best black and white cinematography for Gregg Toland. Geraldine Fitzgerald got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress as the woman on the neighboring estate who develops a Statue of Liberty size torch for Olivier who can't see her for beans, but marries her anyway in some twisted act of revenge against her brother, played by David Niven, who married Oberon. Oscar nominations went to the film for Best Picture and to William Wyler for Best Director and several other technical nominations went to the film as well.

David Niven liked working with Olivier, Oberon and the rest, but he hated his part of Edgar Linton. He felt it had no depth to him, but it was a typical David Niven part, full of surface charm and little else.

Over 60 years later Wuthering Heights is still a film for lovers of all ages. We all hope in the next world that Olivier and Oberon have a better life and start on an equal plane.