Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, December 5, 1994 TAG: 9501040001
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Tom Shales
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
One might even say that TNT, whose original movies tend to be colorlessly competent at best, has hit new ``Heights.''
The novel has been filmed three times before, counting a 1954 Spanish-language version by surrealist Luis Bunuel. Timothy Dalton - who was later James Bond and, most recently, a third-rate Rhett in ``Scarlett'' on CBS - played Heathcliff to Anna Calder-Marshall's Cathy in a humdrum 1970 adaptation.
But the film version best known is, of course, the one William Wyler directed and Samuel Goldwyn produced in 1939. Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon were the doomed duo in the film, which won an Oscar for its black-and-white cinematography. Olivier and Oberon never got near a moor - the picture was shot on Hollywood soundstages - yet it was easily as atmospheric as the new version, filmed on location in North Yorkshire.
In a point-by-point comparison, TNT's film does not measure up to Wyler's, but it offers an intelligent and apparently more faithful approach to Bronte's novel and is well worth seeing. The 1939 film ended soon after the death of Cathy, whereas there's still 40 minutes to go when Cathy dies in the new version. Heathcliff lives on for 20 years, brooding about his lost love and waiting for her ghost to haunt him.
Although the new version is making its U.S. premiere on TNT, it was actually made in 1992 and released theatrically in England. Ralph Fiennes, who plays the mopey Heathcliff, wasn't a star then, but later he made a big impression as a Nazi commandant in Steven Spielberg's ``Schindler's List.'' More recently he played Charles Van Doren in Robert Redford's flop ``Quiz Show.''
Fickle Cathy is played beguilingly by French actress Juliette Binoche, ably suppressing her accent. She and Fiennes give stirring performances but only to a point, the point of audibility. As often happens in modern movies, the actors tend to murmur or whisper so quietly that some of their dialogue vanishes in the air or suffocates under the soundtrack music.
That music, by Ryuichi Sakamoto, is rapturous, one of the most beautiful scores ever written for a TV movie, but it's a pity the actors' voices occasionally get lost in it. Actors and directors in films today prefer this supposedly naturalistic way of speaking to the theatrical, declamatory style of old movies, but one thing you can say for Olivier and Oberon: Every word could be heard.
Sometimes the actors in the new film talk to one another so quietly that it's doubtful their voices would carry across a room.
Adapter Anne Devlin and director Peter Kosminsky obviously believe that less is more where dialogue is concerned. Heathcliff, the scruffy gypsy lad, has been made virtually monosyllabic; Cathy even chastises him at one point for talking too little. And then when he does talk, it's hard to hear him. ``Be with me always,'' he tells Cathy, ``take any form, drive me mad, only do not leave me. ... '' He goes on, but unintelligibly.
Devlin also has an unfortunate knack for making key events occur off-camera, like Edgar's proposal to Cathy, her wedding, her demise, and Heathcliff's adventures away from the moors, when he mysteriously comes into money.
And yet with all these shortcomings, the movie still works, partly because the story is so strong and partly because there are enough powerful scenes to sustain it. When an anguished Heathcliff breaks into the mortuary to caress Cathy's lifeless body, it's shattering. When they have their final reunion near the film's end, it's intensely moving. And visually, the film is a dark, stark knockout.
Sinead O'Connor, the controversy-prone singer with the oddly angelic face, appears briefly as Emily Bronte herself, describing how she came to write such a tragic tale. ``Take care not to smile at any part of it,'' she warns. There's little danger of that. And yet this ``Wuthering Heights'' is so well done that it's a happy surprise anyway.
by CNB