Stormy passion
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Stormy passion |
| Original title | Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights |
| Country of production | Great Britain |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1992 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Peter Kosminsky |
| script | Anne Devlin |
| production | Simon Bosanquet |
| music | Ryuichi Sakamoto |
| camera | Mike Southon |
| cut | Tony Lawson |
| occupation | |
| |
Wuthering Heights is an adaptation of the novel Wuthering Heights (dt. Titles and a. .: Wuthering Heights ) by Emily Brontë .
action
For a synopsis of the novel see: Sturmhöhe
Intro
Emily Brontë, the narrator - played by Sinéad O'Connor - goes to the ruins of Wuthering Heights and begins to tell the story from the off :
1801: A rider approaches Wuthering Heights in bad weather and is let in by an old servant. The newcomer is Lockwood, the new tenant of House Thrushcross Grange. The landlord, Heathcliff, greets the visitor in an unfriendly manner. It is already getting dark, but Heathcliff indicates that he does not want a guest. He leaves Lockwood alone in the hall.
Heathcliff's daughter-in-law Catherine secretly shows Lockwood an unused room upstairs. There Lockwood lies down to sleep in an old, dusty bed. During the night he is woken up by a knock on the window. He sees a ghost outside the house and begins to scream. Heathcliff and his daughter-in-law rush over. Lockwood can only stammer that young Catherine's face was ghostly.
The narrator goes on to say that Lockwood stumbled upon an ancient story that began about thirty years before his arrival.
The childhood of Cathy and Heathcliff
1771: Old Earnshaw, owner of the Wuthering Heights house, comes home from a trip to Liverpool and brings a neglected foundling with him. He names the boy Heathcliff and lets him grow up like his son. The daughter Cathy soon befriends Heathcliff, the son Hindley hates and torments his supposed rival. The maid Ellen Dean ("Nelly") is a surrogate mother for Heathcliff.
The time under Hindley
After Mr. Earnshaw's death, Hindley, now married, becomes the new landlord. Heathcliff is demoted to a servant by him.
Heathcliff and Cathy are getting older. The sibling relationship gradually turns into love. The secret meeting point of the two is a lonely tree surrounded by stones. The two run down into the valley to the Lintons' house. There, Cathy is attacked by a guard dog. The Lintons take care of the injured girl. The "gypsy boy" Heathcliff is sent back to Wuthering Heights.
The end of childhood
Cathy spends three weeks with the Lintons. Hindley has banned Heathcliff from having contact with his sister, and no secret contacts are possible. Heathcliff learns to his alarm that Cathy has changed a lot with the Lintons. When he meets Cathy again after her return home, he is intimidated by her elegant appearance, she laughs at his dirty appearance. Cathy apologizes for her reaction, but Heathcliff is very hurt.
Hindley holds a festival on Wuthering Heights to which the Lintons are invited. Heathcliff tries to "dress up" for the occasion but is immediately thrown out and beaten up by Hindley and Joseph at the festival. Cathy takes care of the injured Heathcliff and says that all people have their obligations, which is why she had to attend the party without him. Heathcliff feels further humiliated by the apparent alienation.
Hindley's wife, Frances, dies giving birth to their son Hareton. Hindley cannot cope with her death and falls into alcoholism . Cathy is spending more and more time with the Lintons. Heathcliff is upset and feeling neglected. In an argument, Cathy accuses Heathcliff that his company is too boring compared to the conversations with Edgar Linton.
The break
Edgar proposes to Cathy, which she accepts. In the evening she tells Nelly about her marriage plans and does not notice that Heathcliff is sitting in a corner of the kitchen and listening. When Nelly asked why Cathy Edgar wanted to marry, Cathy replied that she found the fine life of the Lintons appealing and that it would also be a social impossibility, a "humiliation", to marry Heathcliff. At this point, Heathcliff quietly leaves the house. Cathy continues and tells Nelly that she still loves Heathcliff more than Edgar because she feels deeply connected to him. Later, Nelly and Cathy discover that Heathcliff has disappeared. Cathy is sad, desperate. Edgar and Cathy get married and henceforth live on Thrushcross Grange. Nelly accompanies Cathy and becomes the housekeeper on the Grange.
Heathcliff returns
The Lintons family life is calm and peaceful. One evening a stranger stands on the doorstep. It's Heathcliff. Cathy is delighted to see them again. Edgar greets him politely and coolly, but reminds Cathy that Heathcliff is just a runaway servant. However, Heathcliff has changed a lot in the two years: he now looks elegant and wealthy. Edgar asks a few polite questions, to which Heathcliff responds with ostentatious indifference, without delving into the meaning of the questions, while his sister is obviously fascinated by the stranger. He casually recounts that he bought the promissory notes from Hindley, who was completely indebted through alcohol and gambling, and is now the landlord of Wuthering Heights. He still sees the house as a home for himself and Cathy. He advertises her openly, even though she is now married. Cathy makes it clear to him, however, that she stands by Edgar and that Heathcliff can only be a friend to her. This rejection encourages Heathcliff in the revenge he wants to take for the years of humiliation by Hinley.
Cathy's death
Cathy warns her sister-in-law Isabella in vain of Heathcliff's rawness and unpredictability, and although Heathcliff openly tells her that he will only marry her for her fortune, she secretly becomes engaged to him. Cathy argues with Edgar, who wants to ban Heathcliff's visits. There is an exchange of blows between Heathcliff and Edgar, in which Heathcliff is injured. Cathy is barely able to prevent Heathcliff from beating Edgar with a poker. The argument leads to a break between Edgar and Cathy. That night, Isabella leaves the Grange with Heathcliff to marry him.
Cathy, who is expecting a child, falls ill and sees Heathcliff in her feverish dreams. When Nelly delivers the news of the birth of Catherine to Isabella, she meets a neglected Isabella who has obviously been mistreated by Heathcliff. When Heathcliff hears that Cathy is ill, he demands that Nelly allow him to visit the Grange. Heathcliff takes Cathy in his arms, but she blames him for her illness, which drives him to despair.
The second generation
At Cathy's deathbed, Heathcliff curses her soul so that it should not find rest and pursue him from now on. He would rather be possessed by a ghost than lonely. This is the beginning of Heathcliff's madness. Hindley eventually dies of drunkenness. Heathcliff takes care of his son Hareton and treats him as badly as he was treated by Hindley for years.
18 years later. Isabella has since died and Catherine grew up on the Grange, isolated from the neighborhood. She learns nothing of the events of the past, neither from her father nor from the servants. One day she, who looks very much like her mother, meets Heathcliff on a walk. He takes her to Wuthering Heights and introduces her to his son Linton. Linton is a sickly pale boy. Catherine likes her cousin Hareton, although Linton makes fun of the unpolished cousin who works like a servant and can't even read. Catherine asks her father Edgar why he never told her about Wuthering Heights. Edgar, who has since become sick and weak, warns them of Heathcliff who will try to rob them of their Wuthering Heights inheritance. Heathcliff has a plan to marry Linton off to Catherine before Edgar dies. He lures Catherine to Wuthering Heights, locks her up and does not want to release her until she marries Linton. Hareton doesn't dare to help her out of fear of Heathcliff. Catherine finally agrees to the marriage. After the wedding ceremony by the hastily called pastor, Catherine is allowed to leave the court. On her father's deathbed, she claims to be happy so that her father can die in peace.
On Wuthering Heights
After Edgar's funeral, Heathcliff digs up Cathy's grave like a madman and breaks open her coffin to see her face again. He rents the Thrushcross Grange estate to Lockwood, and he takes Catherine to Wuthering Heights, which, after Linton also died, has now finally passed into his possession. Catherine blames Hareton for not helping her while she was locked up. Nelly is working on Wuthering Heights again. She encourages Catherine to befriend Hareton, and Catherine teaches him to read and write. When Heathcliff and Catherine get into an argument one evening over a small garden that Catherine is about to create, she tries to get Hareton to her side. However, Hareton stays out of the argument and explains to her that Heathcliff is like a father to him. As a result, Catherine avoids arguments with her father-in-law. Heathcliff is becoming more and more delusional and tries to keep him away from the young people. On a stormy evening, Lockwood stands at the door and asks for accommodation for the night. He is housed in a dusty, cold room on the upper floor, wakes up from sleep, sees a ghostly apparition in front of him and runs down the stairs, confused. Heathcliff storms up into the room and sees Cathy's ghost before him. The following morning, Nelly finds Heathcliff dead in the bed. His face looks relaxed and happy. After Heathcliff's death, Hareton and Catherine become lovers.
Locations
- Wuthering Heights, the Earnshaw family estate on the rugged Yorkshire moors
- "Thrushcross Grange", the feudal seat of the Linton family in a climatically milder valley [Broughton Hall near Skipton ].
- A solitary tree in the middle of a stone formation, Cathy and Heathcliff's favorite place.
- The locations mentioned are in North Yorkshire , the actual location of the novel.
reception
The film, which received consistently negative reviews, flopped at the box office in the UK and the US. He was more or less ignored by professional criticism, with Rotten Tomatoes he achieved a rate of 33% with only nine votes cast, and Daily Variety of October 6, 1992 called the film a "Christmas Turkey" (a Christmas bankruptcy).
Adam Mars Jones, the critic of the Independent , draws like almost all of his colleagues a comparison with William Wyler's version from 1939, which is to the disadvantage of Kosminsky's film. Kosminsky does not succeed in bringing the gothic flair of the novel onto the screen. He sees the causes in a botched script, the involuntary comedy in the narrator's performance and certain embarrassments in the exaggerations when the stormy weather is all too flatly related to the emotional storm of those involved. He sees the positive thing about the film in the fact that Kosminsky tells the whole story and doesn't let the film end with the death of the protagonist. However, through Anne Devlin's script, it becomes clear that Brontë's novel is the general prototype for all soap operas ever made.
Cathy Young from the Weekly Standard thinks the film is worth seeing just because of the performance of Ralph Fiennes, but considers Juliette Binoche to be a bad cast in both roles that she embodies.
Even Variety compares like most critics as exemplary Counting interpretation of the main characters by Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier in the classic 1939 film with Kosminsky. Variety also considers Binoche to be a miscast in both roles, particularly noticeable in the role as the daughter of Cathy, while Fiennes, who is his second role in a film after A Dangerous Man , has his skills, complicated and demonic characters portray it, play it out as soon as the script gives it the opportunity.
Steven Spielberg, however, recognized Fiennes' acting potential. He invited him to audition for Schindler's List after seeing Fiennes' two debut films. He offered him, who was completely unknown as a film actor in the USA and Great Britain, the role of Amon Goeth after he had only watched the first take of three. The role earned Fiennes an Oscar nomination and made him known internationally in one fell swoop. Spielberg said in an interview: " Fiennes was absolutely brilliant [...] I saw sexually evil in his eyes [...] there were moments of goodness that flashed over his eyes and at the same time froze in the cold".
Web links
- Wuthering Heights in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Susan King, 'Wuthering Heights' Gets TV Reprieve Los Angeles Times, April 12, 1994, accessed November 3, 2018
- ^ Wuthering Heights (1992) Rotten Tomatoes, accessed November 3, 2018
- ↑ Quoted from: Susan King: Fiennes' First, 'Wuthering Heights' Gets TV Reprieve Los Angeles Times, December 4, 1994, accessed November 5, 2018
- ^ Adam Mars Jones: Film - Heights and Depths Independent, October 16, 1992, accessed October 24, 2018
- ↑ Cathy Young: Emily Brontë at 200: Is Wuthering Heights a Love Story? The Weekly Standard, August 26, 2018, accessed October 24, 2018
- ↑ Derek Elley: Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights Variety, August 28, 1992, accessed October 24, 2018
- ↑ "I saw sexual evil. It is all about subtlety: there were moments of kindness that would move across his eyes and then instantly run cold ". Quoted from Richard Corliss: The Man Behind the Monster [1] Time, June 24, 2001, accessed November 5, 2018.