The story, which is on the A-level English syllabus, is also fantastically complicated, but in a nutshell: Cathy Earnshaw\u2019s father rescues the young Heathcliff from the streets of Liverpool and brings him to live in the family home on the Yorkshire moors. He and Cathy become close \u2014 but when they grow up Cathy is torn between Heathcliff and a more conventional life with their wealthy neighbour, Edgar Linton. After Heathcliff runs away she marries Linton; he returns three years later to seduce Linton\u2019s sister Isabella, and all hell breaks loose: there are ghosts, howling storms, dug-up graves and murdered puppies. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a lot, which is what attracted the director of the equally unhinged Saltburn (remember what Barry Keoghan did with a dug-up grave). Last September Fennell told the Bront\u00eb Women\u2019s Writing Festival that Wuthering Heights \u201ccracked me open\u201d: \u201cI\u2019ve been driven mad by this book. I know that if somebody else made it I\u2019d be furious.\u201d When she first saw Elordi in his Heathcliff sideburns she \u201cwanted to scream\u201d with excitement. <\/p>\n
\u2022 I\u2019m a Bront\u00eb expert. Wuthering Heights has always been a sexy shocker<\/a><\/p>\n The thing is, somebody else has made it. Since Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon\u2019s 1939 version (pretty great, even if it was shot in California), there have been dozens more: feature films in English, French, Hindi, Japanese and Spanish (Luis Bu\u00f1uel\u2019s Abismos de pasi\u00f3n); multiple TV adaptations; a musical (Cliff Richard\u2019s 1996 Heathcliff); and a Kate Bush No 1, written when she was 18 after seeing Ian McShane in the BBC\u2019s 1967 version. Despite its strangeness and deep Yorkshire roots, Bront\u00eb\u2019s story has resonated at the level of myth \u2014 a story about crazy, stupid love that every generation wants another go at.<\/p>\n In 1958 Richard Burton played an inescapably Welsh Heathcliff, in a one-off live broadcast for CBS. Rosemary Harris, now 98, played Cathy. \u201cI wasn\u2019t supposed to be Cathy,\u201d she tells me on a call from New York. \u201cI was busy doing Dial M for Murder on TV when they asked, and I recommended a gorgeous girl I knew from Rada, Yvonne Furneaux.\u201d She was thrilled when Furneaux was cast, sending flowers to her hotel, but on the first day of rehearsals Burton took against her. \u201cThe producer David Susskind called me and said, \u2018You better come and put out a fire \u2014 we fired Yvonne.\u2019 A car came the next day. Luckily the costumes fitted.\u201d <\/p>\n Harris had played Desdemona to Burton\u2019s Othello at the Old Vic, so knew him well. \u201cHe was a good friend and I had no trouble with him. I never had an affair with Richard, though everybody assumed. He was attractive but my girlish heart went out to John Neville [Iago], who unfortunately was married.\u201d She had five days to learn Cathy\u2019s lines. \u201cI had bits of paper on set \u2014 when Richard came to kiss me on my deathbed I tucked them under my pillow.\u201d<\/p>\n For decades the recording was lost, before being discovered in a TV archive in 2019. What did Harris think, watching it again? \u201cIt creaked a bit because it was live. We did a couple of heath scenes on the Saturday because I had to get my hair wet, but the rest was all live on the Sunday.\u201d She didn\u2019t identify with Cathy, she says. \u201cI didn\u2019t grow up on a moor, I\u2019m not a Bront\u00eb.\u201d Still, she worries about Fennell\u2019s new take. \u201cIs it controversial? Oh dear.\u201d <\/p>\n Anna Calder-Marshall was 23 when she played Cathy opposite the future 007 Timothy Dalton in the 1970 version. The film\u2019s US producer, Louis Heyward, wanted to shake things up, telling reporters: \u201cOlivier and Oberon portrayed him as a regular nice guy and her as sweetness and light. That was not the truth and Hollywood now goes in for the truth. Heathcliff was a bastard and Cathy a real bitch and that\u2019s how they\u2019ll be.\u201d<\/p>\n Anna Calder-Marshall as Cathy and Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff in the 1970 film adaptation<\/p>\n ALAMY<\/p>\n His notes must have got lost in the post because the film that emerged was pretty and restrained. \u201cSome of the scenes weren\u2019t gritty enough, so Tim and I made suggestions,\u201d Calder-Marshall tells me. \u201cWe wanted it to be rougher. They agreed, but then they made an enormous cut. It was very much of that period, softened and romanticised.\u201d The critics were not kind, calling it \u201ca spiritless soap opera \u2026 with Heathcliff about as demonic as a shy farm-hand.\u201d At the premiere, Heyward told Calder-Marshall that she had been a disappointment. \u201cHe said, \u2018How come you look so good in life but lousy in my film?\u2019 I wasn\u2019t allowed make-up on screen because they wanted it bleak.\u201d<\/p>\n She recalls preparing for the scene where Cathy is bitten by a guard dog. \u201cI thought, I\u2019d better make friends with it. I took it for a walk on the heath, and I lost the bloody dog. It was a scary animal, but they dragged it back. The next day, this dog could hardly walk because they\u2019d drugged it. They had to hit it and whip it to make it attack us. Tim and I were horrified.\u201d<\/p>\n Dalton, Calder-Marshall says, \u201ccould get a bit Heathcliffy in the evenings. I don\u2019t think he would mind me saying. But you couldn\u2019t have two of us being Cathy and Heathcliff in the evenings.\u201d Was there an off-screen romance? \u201cI think there would have been if I hadn\u2019t just met my husband.\u201d<\/p>\n An off-screen romance was a godsend for the 2009 ITV adaptation with Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley, who fell in love and are now married with two children. \u201cThe chemistry was amazing,\u201d the director Coky Giedroyc, sister of Mel, recalls. \u201cIt got very steamy, to the extent that I had to keep yelling, \u2018Cut!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Charlotte Riley and Tom Hardy in the 2009 ITV production<\/p>\n ITV\/SHUTTERSTOCK<\/p>\n She had directed Hardy in two BBC period dramas, The Virgin Queen and Oliver Twist, and he was her first choice for Heathcliff. \u201cHis mother\u2019s from Yorkshire and he did this grubby, visceral accent. Tom has a gift that is so unusual, like a Marlon Brando from East Sheen \u2014 he\u2019s just so out there. He can be very aggressive, but when he\u2019s sad or delicate it\u2019s heart-wrenching.\u201d<\/p>\n Hardy also went a bit Method, disappearing on to the moors in a series of cars he had been lent after recently learning to drive. They argued over his wig, which he said made him look like Slash from Guns N\u2019 Roses. \u201cHe sent me a little film of him ripping it off and stamping on it, then putting it on his head. It looked ridiculous, but I got his point: \u2018Can we not be too uptight?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The way to do Wuthering Heights, Giedroyc thinks, is to have a conversation with Emily Bront\u00eb and then let her go: your film has to work on its own terms. \u201cI\u2019m a big fan of these crazy, passionate 19th-century novels and inhaled them as a child. But they are so robust \u2014 they can take new ideas and reimaginings. Structurally Wuthering Heights is not a great novel \u2014 don\u2019t tell the Bront\u00eb society \u2014 but, like Frankenstein, it\u2019s absolutely primal.\u201d<\/p>\n Peter Bowker, who wrote the screenplay for Giedroyc\u2019s take, likens the process to coming up with a cover song. \u201cYou\u2019ve got John Coltrane\u2019s My Favorite Things and you\u2019ve got Julie Andrews\u2019s, and both are good.\u201d He doesn\u2019t get the purists who fret about Fennell doing a \u201c50 Shades of Bront\u00eb\u201d. \u201cNobody need worry. The book is still there, and it might bring people to the book.\u201d It already is: booksellers are predicting strong sales after heavy marketing on TikTok, while shops across the country are hosting reader events. <\/p>\n Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie in Emerald Fennell\u2019s film<\/p>\n WARNER BROS<\/p>\n Bowker began by tearing the book up. \u201cI literally took scissors to a paperback and stuck it back together in chronological order. After the drama went out, I got a lot of letters from English A-level teachers thanking me. The combination of the confusing order, and the similarity of all the characters\u2019 names, had been losing students.\u201d<\/p>\n Fennell has kept Bront\u00eb\u2019s heightened dialogue \u2014 Cathy\u2019s \u201cI am Heathcliff!\u201d speech, Heathcliff\u2019s \u201cBe with me always, take any form, drive me mad!\u201d \u2014 and so did Bowker. \u201cA lot of our romantic language was invented in that novel \u2014 the trick is to direct it with naturalism. We\u2019ve all been in love, we\u2019ve all said things we wouldn\u2019t say in any other circumstance. And we need to hear that language because it\u2019s what makes Cathy and Heathcliff forgivable.\u201d <\/p>\n \u2022 Here\u2019s why the film of the book is always a disappointment<\/a><\/p>\n What does Bowker think Wuthering Heights is about? \u201cIf I wanted to piss everyone off, I\u2019d say toxic masculinity. Really, it\u2019s about a series of unfortunate men making very bad decisions, starting with Heathcliff being taken from Liverpool. It\u2019s about class and generational pain \u2014 Heathcliff makes a decision to cause damage and sticks with it.\u201d<\/p>\n Margot Robbie and Emerald Fennell on the film set<\/p>\n WARNER BROS<\/p>\n Bowker and Giedroyc say that if they were filming the book now they would pay more attention to Heathcliff\u2019s ethnicity. Bront\u00eb returns repeatedly to her hero\u2019s darkness and difference, yet only one version has cast a black Heathcliff. Andrea Arnold\u2019s 2011 film featured James Howson as the lead, opposite a 19-year-old Kaya Scodelario, after a lengthy search for a northern non-actor who could bring authentic outsiderdom to the screen.<\/p>\n Gail Stevens, the casting director behind Slumdog Millionaire and the 28 Days films, led the process. \u201cOriginally Andrea was looking for someone of Romany descent, so we were seeing people from Travellers\u2019 camps, but they were very fair. So we broadened the search, looking in boxing clubs and sports clubs.\u201d Howson responded to an ad in a Leeds jobcentre. \u201cHe stood out in the workshops \u2014 he had talent, he looked great. I thought, thank goodness, because it had been a grim old time.\u201d<\/p>\n But there was a long wait for funding before the shoot began, and afterwards Howson\u2019s part was dubbed by a more experienced actor. A year after the film\u2019s Venice Film Festival premiere he was given a conditional discharge for racially harassing his partner and detained under the Mental Health Act. \u201cI was heartbroken for him,\u201d Stevens says. \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone looked out for him. It was very tricky for James to have to promote the film and be the face but not the voice of it. To go to Venice, be given a beautiful suit, hang around with film stars, and then go back to your council flat.\u201d He has not acted since.<\/p>\n James Howson as Heathcliff in Andrea Arnold\u2019s 2011 film<\/p>\n ALAMY<\/p>\n The other star of Bront\u00eb\u2019s book is the Yorkshire moors, lovingly shot for Arnold by her longtime cinematographer Robbie Ryan despite six weeks of unwanted sunshine. \u201cWe expected it to be miserably wet,\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cWe needed rain for a scene where Heathcliff walks away, but the pipes froze and I had to do it with a watering can from behind the camera.\u201d Even so, the location turned into a mudbath. \u201cI was running around with a 35mm camera in rugby boots and a T-shirt that said There Will Be Mud.\u201d There were animals everywhere. \u201cTons of dogs, tons of horses. Wuthering Heights is a love story, for sure, but it\u2019s the environment that makes it for me \u2014 it should be a shot in the arm of nature.\u201d<\/p>\n Ryan had hated the book, a school set text. \u201cI was a 17-year-old boy from Dublin, I had no interest.\u201d But Arnold\u2019s passion swayed him. \u201cI\u2019ll go anywhere she goes \u2014 we have great fun. To be able to transfer what we\u2019d been doing in confined spaces in Fish Tank or Red Road to this great expanse was literally a breath of fresh air.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Read more film reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews<\/a><\/p>\n He is curious to see what Fennell does with literature\u2019s great fever dream. So what if her Wuthering Heights is more of a vibe than a story? \u201cThe cinematography looks great, and they\u2019ve used some of the same locations. But the way the world works now is so different \u2014 the way it\u2019s packaged, and pumped for memes, and teased since last summer.\u201d<\/p>\n Bront\u00eb died a year after Wuthering Heights was published, aged 30, unrecognised as the author of a book deemed too \u201cwild, confused, disjointed\u201d. Nearly 180 years later she\u2019s a writer for our chaotic times. \u201cIronically,\u201d Ryan says, \u201cin Bront\u00eb\u2019s time people wanted to get rid of a book they thought was too provocative. Now there\u2019s a film being put out there and everybody wants it to be provocative, to be sexy. We can\u2019t wait to see it. I think that\u2019s a good paradox.\u201d <\/p>\n Wuthering Heights is released on Feb 13<\/p>\n Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, 1939 The leads didn\u2019t get on, but you can\u2019t tell in this subtly directed classic. Although the moor scenes were shot on a Californian plain, it still won an Oscar for best cinematography. Prime Video<\/p>\n Kate Bush, 1978<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s me! I\u2019m Cathy! I\u2019ve come home\u201d: it\u2019s the earworm Bront\u00eb might have written, and for sheer passion and oddness Bush\u2019s Cathy is our most authentic yet. Written when she was 18, it\u2019s best experienced with one of its two high-drama videos.<\/p>\n Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, 1992 Fiennes\u2019 screen debut was typically intense: he complained when a scene of him bashing his head against a tree was cut. Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor plays Bront\u00eb in a voiceover. Prime Video, Apple TV<\/p>\n James Howson and Kaya Scodelario, 2011 <\/p>\n Andrea Arnold dialled down the love story, but it\u2019s hard to beat this one for its windswept, semi-feral Yorkshire beauty, recreating a world closest to Bront\u00eb\u2019s own. Prime Video, Disney+<\/p>\n Claire Bloom and Keith Michell, 1962 Bloom\u2019s Yorkshire accent may have wobbled, but Dennis Potter, a TV critic at the time, called this BBC adaptation \u201ca thunderstorm on the flat, dreary plains of the week\u2019s television\u201d. It\u2019s not easily available, but worth seeking out. Bloom\u2019s former lover Richard Burton gave his (notably Welsh) Heathcliff in 1958<\/a>. Available to buy second hand on eBay<\/p>\n What is your favourite Wuthering Heights adaptation? Let us know in the comments below<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First things first: Wuthering Heights is a demented novel. 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