August Bank Holiday

The Telegraph talks about the autumn ITV season and highlights Wuthering Heights 2009:

Tom Hardy, 31, will play the passionate Heathcliff who falls in love with his childhood friend Cathy, played by Charlotte Riley, 27, in an adaptation of Emily Bronte's classic love story.
The pair recently starred in Martina Cole's crime drama The Take, on Sky1, which was set in the criminal underworld of London's East End.
By contrast, the actors have been reunited on the Yorkshire moors in a two part costume drama, which will be shown on ITV1 later this year as part of the broadcaster's autumn schedule. (Urmee Khan)

The Yorkshire Post centers on Charlotte Riley and gives a date for the broadcast, the August Bank Holiday weekend:

Charlotte Riley plays Cathy in television's new take on Wuthering Heights. She comes from Yorkshire and so must be well-versed in the book and its many film manifestations. Right? Wrong.
"Sorry, but it had completely passed me by," she says. "I'd not picked up the book, nor had I seen any of the screen versions. I knew vaguely about it, but I'd never come into proper contact with it. So the very first time that I knew the story well was when my agent sent me the screenplay by Peter Bowker.
"On picking it up, I was completely sold on it. I went in and did one audition, and then I did one screen test, and that was that. I was on board – thank God. So I came to it completely afresh.
"I think that that was a great help. I formed my own opinions of Cathy from Peter's script, and not from the previous work of others. When I'd thumbed through his interpretation and when I'd found my own way as Cathy, I went and read the book several times."
Charlotte discovered that Wuthering Heights is not a gentle novel nor an easy read. "Basically it's about people being very cruel towards each other. It's about revenge, and hate. There are no grey areas. The damage that is done to Heathcliff as a child and as a young man affects the next generation, and he is determined that it does. Where did Emily Brontë get it all from – a girl brought up in a parsonage?
"Then I watched as many versions as I could lay my hands on. I think that the best one for me was, oddly enough, a French version set in the 1920s, which was visually very attractive and interesting. The Juliette Binoche film of not so long ago isn't my favourite. I wasn't actually looking at who was playing Cathy, to be honest, I was looking at the atmosphere, the colours, the way that the story came across on the screen."
Charlotte has no doubts about the story's relevance today. "At its core it is all about an obsessional love affair that starts in Cathy and Heathcliff's teens. I think we've all had one of those at some point in our lives, when you have such a crush on someone else that your life seems to be taken over completely. I can relate to that."
Charlotte, 28, is single and shares with a group of girl friends in a "big London house". When she finally found herself in front of the cameras for Wuthering Heights, "I felt that it was a bit like a singer doing a cover version of a great and much-loved song. You have to give it your best shot, and your own interpretation to make it work. To make it your own."
Her co-star, as Heathcliff is Tom Hardy. Where Cathy and Heathcliff had years to forge their passion, Charlotte and Tom had a few days to get to know each other.
"It really wasn't that long. I thought that it was about two weeks, but I was told the other day that my memory was playing tricks and that it was only about four or five days. The chemistry was there immediately. I like Tom a lot, and since we made Wuthering Heights we've made The Take together, and that has a very explicit scene in it, a rape. It was made easier to do because Tom and I already had an understanding because of Heights.
"He is genuinely one of the most generous actors that I have ever encountered. One of the first scenes that we did in Heights was Cathy and Heathcliff's meeting in the barn. Tom kept on turning me gently this way and that and I wondered what he was up to.
"When the director shouted 'cut', Tom said, 'Charlotte, sorry about that, but you weren't facing the camera, and it's your scene, and your face has to be there to be seen', which was lovely of him.
"Love scenes are probably the worst things that you can ever do for a camera. There's nothing remotely romantic or sexy about them. You have to make sure that the camera angle is correct, that your hair isn't going to tumble forwards and into your face or mouth, so many things. You want to do it so well. In essence it's all deeply embarrassing."
Whatever Emily Brontës' fictional intent, Charlotte has her own view of the characters' relationship. "Did they get it together? Of course they did. As soon as they were teenagers…up on the moors all day in each other's company, for year after year? For five years at least they were together like wild things, so they must have been at it like… well, like hormonally charged teenagers. Something must have happened, the characters seem so sexually alert."
Peter Bowker has taken some liberties with the book in his script, but Charlotte defends him. "There's a lot of child cruelty in Emily's novel, lots of lashings and floggings and beatings, and it is rather sadistic at times. We couldn't put much of that on the screen in the way that Emily wrote it, the NSPCC would have been outraged.
"There's a lot of black humour, too. I suppose the scene that might get some people going is where Heathcliff goes to Cathy's grave almost 20 years after her death and digs up her coffin. He crawls into the space
and holds her rotted corpse – which he believes in his own deranged mind is the Cathy that he's just laid to rest.
"That imagery is actually in Emily Brontë's original. Heathcliff hints at one point that he held her while she was dead, but still warm.
That's a bit gruesome, isn't it?
"It was a harrowing scene to film for me – they dug a grave, a hole, for the box, and then I had to lie in that. Then they put the rotting planking of the coffin on top, and threw earth on it. I was completely buried. And since I am claustrophobic, it wasn't nice at all.
"My eyes were tightly shut and it was very scary, very nasty being buried alive."
The two-parter was shot in Yorkshire last summer. "We finished at about eight-thirty or nine thirty at night and then generally it was back to our hotel in Leeds and a shower and sitting learning the lines for the next day.
"There were a few occasions when Tom, and Andrew Lincoln (who plays Cathy's husband Edgar) and I went out for dinner with a few others. You have to let your hair down a little sometimes.
"I think that the worst thing about the shoot were the midges that discovered our flesh during that summer. One weekend we all disappeared for a day or so. The actors came back and we saw the crew, in that couple of days, had found protective clothing – hats and netting and whatever. We were all still exposed, bare skin, and they were standing around dressed like aliens.
"There's no weather cover insurance these days, so you just keep on going whatever happens. If
you can't shoot scenes outdoors, you move rapidly to interiors.
"There's not a single second wasted."
Switching locations could be quite arduous.
"They're all over the place – Oakwell Hall in Birstall, East Riddlesden Hall in Keighley, Braham Park, Stockeld Park near Wetherby, Arncliffe, Halton Gill.
"As with most filming, you see the exterior of a place, and the interior isn't always the same one – so therewas a lot of travelling for us all. I don't think that one stood out as a favourite, they were all stunningly beautiful in their own way."
She believes that she can identify with Cathy, at least in some ways.
"For a start, I am from that area, well, from Teesside. I am also a bit of a tomboy, and I do like the countryside, and escaping in to it. I like my freedom, and enjoying the outdoors."
ITV's new take on Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights will be shown over the August Bank Holiday weekend. (Phil Penfold)

The Faster Times talks about James Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizon and its Brontë references:

And there are other peculiarities. Shangri-la, it turns out, is not really Tibetan at all. It was founded by a wandering Frenchman called Perrault in the 18th century who lived to an amazing age and founded the monastery’s collection of classical music and world classics. Then we discover that the High Lama himself is a Bronte scholar, a fan of Wuthering Heights, no less. (Lawrence Osborne)

These are the references:

One white-haired and benevolent-looking person, for instance, asked Conway, after a little conversation, if he were interested in the Brontës. Conway said he was, to some extent, and the other replied: "You see, when I was a curate in the West Riding during the 'forties, I once visited Haworth and stayed at the Parsonage. Since coming here I've made a study of the whole Brontë problem--indeed, I'm writing a book on the subject. Perhaps you might care to go over it with me sometime?" (Chapter 9)

But this kind of thing was not for them all, nor for any of them always; there were many tideless channels in which they dived in mere waywardness, retrieving, like Briac, fragments of old tunes, or like the English ex-curate, a new theory about Wuthering Heights. (Chapter 10)

YoZone reviews Édith & Yann's Hurlevent (Volume 1) comic:

Cette collection Ex-libris est décidément pleine de (bonnes) surprises. Dirigée par Jean David Morvan et proposant des adaptations d’écrits célèbres, elle offre une palette large et diversifiée de styles.
Entre le réalisme de “Double Assassinat dans la rue Morgue”, le zoomorphisme des “Enfants du Capitaine Grant” et le superbe dessin stylisé de ce premier volume des “Hauts de Hurlevent”, il y a de quoi contenter tous les goûts. Pour ma part, j’aurais tendance à préférer le style des deux derniers au réalisme de l’adaptation de Poe, qui se limite trop pour moi à l’illustration pure du récit et n’y confère pas d’ambiance ni d’interprétation particulière.
Le point fort de cette revisite du roman d’Emily Brontë, c’est l’atmosphère singulière que les couleurs et les dessins d’Édith créent. Les dominantes vert-de-gris, les ciels chargés et les intérieurs sombres mettent en avant un décor de landes sauvages et reflètent le caractère ombrageux des protagonistes.
La couleur directe donne de l’ampleur aux paysages, le grain du papier et les coups de crayons leurs confèrent un charme particulier.
Le scénario met l’accent sur les personnages, l’un des composants primordiaux du roman. En effet, leur noirceur et leur emportement ont choqué plus d’un lecteur lors de sa parution en 1847.
On accroche très rapidement au récit que Yann a su résumer par des moments clefs. De fait, on saisit l’essentiel de la trame et l’on peut sans mal ressentir une certaine empathie pour les acteurs principaux de cette histoire.
La coupure entre les deux volumes arrivent au bon moment et on ne peut qu’attendre la suite, impatient de connaître le dénouement de cet enchevêtrement sentimental.
Voici donc un premier tome franchement accrocheur, que ce soit dans sa mise en image ou dans son adaptation scénaristique. Connaisseur ou non de l’œuvre originelle, le récit est accessible à tous et sait trouver un intérêt. Une bonne surprise. (Myriam Bouchet) (Google translation)

More Twilight-Wuthering Heights links in Málaga Hoy and Mega24 (Argentina) and Le Figaro (France).

More romance and Wuthering Heights in the Romance Novel Examiner, Magia e Romance talks about Wuthering Heights (in Portuguese), a Jane Eyre doll on My Byrd House, das_kanischem posts some pictures of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights book foldings.

Categories: Comics, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights