Three Wuthering Screenings in Vienna

Three Wuthering screenings today, October 21, at the Vienna International Film Festival:

Viennale'2016
Filmmuseum
Augustinerstraße 1, 1010 Wien

October 21, 16.30 h (also November 7, 18.30h)
Abismos de Pasión, 1954
by Luis Buñuel

This “Wuthering Heights” is nothing if not Spanish in its tone. It’s also Roman Catholic down to its toes in the way that it reflects the particular obsessions of the self-described nonbeliever who made it. It’s still the tale of the mystical, all-consuming love of the well-born Cathy (here named Catalina) for her childhood sweetheart, the handsome, rudely tyrannical, former stable boy, Heathcliff, renamed Alejandro by Buñuel. The English moors are now the barren hills of rural Mexico and what once seemed to be a romantic rebellion against the genteel manners of Anglican England has now become a darker, timeless war between the forces of light and darkness. (Vincent Canby)

October 21, 18.30 h (also November 5, 16.00h)
Wuthering Heights, 1939
by William Wyler

Out of Brontë’s strange tale of a tortured romance Mr. Goldwyn and his troupe have fashioned a strong and somber film, poetically written, sinister and wild as the novel was meant to be, far more compact dramatically than Miss Brontë had made it. It isn’t exactly a faithful transcription, which would have served neither Miss Brontë nor the screen – whatever the Brontë societies may think about it. But it is a faithful adaptation, which goes straight to the heart of the book, explores its shadows and draws dramatic fire from the savage flints of scene and character hidden there. (Frank S. Nugent, New York Times, 1939)

October 21, 21.00h
Hurlevent, 1985
by Jacques Rivette

Hurlevent is Rivette’s impressive rendition of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights”. He shifted the action to the Cévennes and characterised by a wild, sun-drenched landscape where isolated farms can be several miles apart. He also introduced three dream sequences, the most impressive of which is interpolated in the middle of the movie and marks a turning point in the action, the three-year separation of Heathcliff/ Roch from Catherine. The blurring of frontiers between conscious and unconscious perception which is made tangible in this central oneiric scene allows a poignant insight into Catherine’s psyche without any need for words. Rivette understood perfectly well that simplicity in the dialogues, locations and costumes was necessary to avoid the trap of over-dramatisation – into which the old period drama of 1939 (with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon) had fallen. (Valérie Hazette)