WUTHERING HEIGHTS Movie Review

Abismos de Pasion
Cumbres Borrascosas

In his autobiography, Luis Buñuel wrote: “Like all surrealists, I was deeply moved by the novel, and had always wanted to try the movie. I knew I had a first-rate script, but I had to work with actors (the producer) had hired for a musical…including a rumba dancer and a Polish actress. As expected, there were horrendous problems during the shoot, and the results were problematical at best.” Of the many versions of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, this 1953 Mexican version by Luis Buñuel may be the most eccentric, wildly uneven and least known. This was the period in which Buñuel was in exile from his native Spain, and he made a number of films in Mexico of varying quality and intensity. That variability can be found within Wuthering Heights, which consists primarily of barely adequate expository stretches cemented by startling sequences, such as Heathcliff's (Alejandro's) appearance in Cathy's (Catarina's) tomb. It's like looking for a modest prize in a box of stale Crackerjack, though. The rewards are there, but they're best enjoyed by those interested in cataloging the complete works of the great surrealist director. Others will be far more satisfied with the 1939 William Wyler version, which is itself problematical in some ways, but pretty swell nevertheless.

NEXT STOP … Él (This Strange Passion), Viridiana, Wuthering Heights (1939)

1953 90m/B MX Irasema Dilian, Jorge Mistral, Lilia Prado, Ernesto Alonso. D: Luis Bunuel. VHS XVC