MovieChat Forums > Wuthering Heights (1939) Discussion > This movie and story is laughable

This movie and story is laughable


Finally, after years hearing about the classic Wuthering Heights I got to see this movie. It is ridiculous. What a contrived story. Cathy and Heathcliff were both horrible people who made everyone miserable really. I think people who love this movie must be disillusional and disenchanted. If you were told this story in the real world, in the here and now, you would probably say it's a very dull story
and forgetful. Which it is for me, I can't wait to forget it.

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Are you nuts!?! Wuthering Heights is a classic! Consider that if was filmed in 1939, there are plenty of crap films made this year that can't hold a candle to it.

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"...a very dull story
and forgetful. Which it is for me, I can't wait to forget it."


I've already forgotten you.

One of the most unforgettable and magnificent movies ever made.

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You may be confusing Heathcliff and Cathy from the newspaper comic strips by the same name. It's a common mistake: a fat, lazy housecat who has delusions of being a royal heir, and a ditzy, frantic girl whose boyfriend won't marry her and who makes all around her miserable.

- - -

"...and that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana shaped."

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I read the book long before I saw the movie and I still prefer the book. I thought most of the movie was outstanding. The last third of it was way too melodramatic for my taste. To be fair, it would be hard to make a movie that exactly replicated the book.

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[deleted]

It some ways the movie does seem a little contrived and ridiculous nowadays. Our era is a little more cynical/realistic about love and these 19th century "love at first sight" kind of stories dont really hold up very well in a lot of ways. However, if you can look past or accept that I found a lot in this movie to enjoy. First, simply the more technical aspects of the film such as the cinematography and soundtrack are wondeful. It is a beaufiful film to look at, matched by a beaufiful and moving score. Second, the performances, especially Laurence Olivier are very enjoyable and helped alleviate some of the sub-par dialogue. Most importantly the ending really did affect me. By the end of the movie I was surprisingly invested in these characters, and thought the ending was one of the more powerful endings I have ever seen. To me it was not a dull story and I certainly have a hard time believing that ANYONE who watched this movie would find it forgetful.

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Indeed, if Emily Bronte were alive today, I'm sure she'd laugh all the way to the bank with her royalties from the 160 years of enduring popularity, acclaim, and sales that her book has maintained.

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Quite simply, the OP's comment is simply a textbook example of film "appreciation" with a total lack of perspective, a myopic and ignorant message of a troglodytic mole burping out another one of his/her pathetic views on a much celebrated cinematographic version of one of the most highly regarded novels of English literature, a bona fide classic in the true essence of the word. Not that this should count in the first place for any review, but still, as many correctly pointed out, thousands and thousands of intelligent, well-informed and well-educated persons simply cannot be wrong about the merits and superb qualities of "Wuthering Heights". I have read it in its original version (I'm a native French speaker, and I had to read it in its original form, no matter the difficulty of the highly sophisticated level of the use of English. The patience I had to deploy reading it in its English form was well rewarded.

I still have to see that version, although I saw the one starring Binoche and Fiennes - which I judged fair (Binoche's acting ruins any role she plays). But to pronounce the truly absurd ex cathedra judgment about the story, well, I can't imagine the script being bad to the point that it reduces the plot to the degree of absurdity that the OP sees in it... And Olivier has managed to turn everything to gold throughout his career, and I seriously doubt that he would have accepted to be part of a project as bad as the OP says it is !

Of course I want to watch that version of WH, and the point of my post is to react strongly against that type of judgments on the quality of films where you need to relativize: using the appropriate historical perspective when judging any film should be a universal, mandatory reflex for anyone posting at ImDB :-) or anywhere anyhow at any time !! Love during the Victorian era or in the XIXth century was a TOTALLY different business, to say the least, so forgetting about this - or worse, behaving as though one completely ignores it, says volumes about how seriously one should consider such an opinion... Yes, love at first sight was seemingly common back in those days, not because people were more romantic or naive or had purer sentiments: more simply because of that gigantic reservoir of repressed sexuality that constantly threatened to burst open ---- oops! A man and a woman with hot libido flowing down their spine to their every extremities, but who simply could not achieve a fully satisfactory outlet for their boiling bodily fluids - as Brig. Gen. Jack Ripper of Dr. Strangelove's fame would have it - outside the holy matrimony, well, these two turgescent folks had to act fast and love at first sight as well as early and expeditive marriages were commonplace for the sake of everyone's sanity. As everyone knows, Freud was right, at least in part, in focusing on sexual dysfunction as the source of more or less mild mental illness.

In brief, ignoring the historical context here in judging the core of the story of "Wuthering Heights" is frighteningly moronesque, to say the least.

Ah well... this is a free forum, and one must live amongst crass ignorance ! I will defend the quality of movies and of the works that inspired them too when I see it blatantly denied by mere ignorance. Otherwise, what's the poinbt of a place like ImDB? I see forums like this one too often sink down to the lowest common denominator that defines the behavior of a crowd of people freely expressing themselves without an effective leadership... It's an expected, normal phenomenon, but that does not mean that we have to witness that free system self-destructing itself in a Darwinian sort of way !

Sorry for my ranting, folks. Aren't you sometimes scared like me by the sheer magnitude of the ignorance that self-exhibits on this forum (and other than ImDB just as well)? And how many times OPs seize star status by shamelessly making total fools of themselves with pointless threads that ALWAYS unfold in the same way, more or less the variety of humor that is, fortunately, added to it, and ALWAYS reflect pure lack of judgment or worse, total ignorance. Now, that's a real calamity and a real threat to quality time that one may expect to spend here :-)

I just hope that if we are enough to show outrage, those who truly seek to share and exchange freely but sensibly about movies and movie making will feel less helpless in the face of ignorance and moron-y ^-)

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[deleted]

I read the book years ago because it was a "classic". I got the same impression as you did.

Logline: Messed up people in a tiny village live a *beep* up life - the end.

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very good summation.
Love it.

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Cathy and Heathcliff were both horrible people who made everyone miserable really.

That's the point. It's not supposed to a feel-good story about the redemptive power of love, it's about how the unhealthy love between two horrible people destroys their lives, and the lives of everyone who comes into contact with them. Most love stories are about how wonderful love is, and how it makes life wonderful, etc., which it can, but it can also be unhealthy and destructive.

Wuthering Heights is an unusual love story because it's about the darker side of love. If you don't like Cathy and Heathcliff, well done! You've grasped the point of the story beautifully.

"He's already attracted to her. Time and monotony will do the rest."

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