80 years ago

Sunday April 7th will mark the 80th anniversary of the release of William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, and so The Independent discusses why 1939 was 'the greatest year in film history'.

On 7 April 1939, Samuel Goldwyn’s production of Emily Brontë’s famous novel Wuthering Heights was released, just one of 365 films produced in Hollywood alone in the year that many film scholars consider the greatest ever for cinema. It was certainly the peak for Hollywood’s Golden Age and the much maligned studio system ruled over by autocrats such as Louis B Mayer and Samuel Goldwyn.
Perhaps it was just serendipity that so many classics were released in 1939 or just the inevitable culmination of great art. Talkies had been established for a decade, with film techniques improving all the time, and European emigres were putting their own very personal stamp on directing and screen writing. And then there were the leading actors, of course, mostly discovered, nurtured and launched into superstardom by the studios and eagerly embraced by audiences who, in 1939 alone in the US purchased cinema tickets at a rate of 80 million a year.
Films were devised with the stars in mind and prestigious novels such as Wuthering Heights and blockbusters like Gone with the Wind would be purchased and filmed brilliantly with no expense spared. So, all these reasons and more contributed to a golden year for movies, and perhaps also there was a feeling even among the insular and self-absorbed of Hollywood that war was inevitable and things could never be quite the same again afterwards.
And so it proved post war, with the growing power of the stars themselves and the advent of television rendering the studio system that had been responsible for so many classics obsolete. Not surprisingly, European film makers had other things on their mind in 1939, but that’s not to say they aren’t represented on this list of the 20 best films of cinema’s greatest year. Try and watch as many of the 20 as you can. [...]
13. Wuthering Heights (Dir William Wyler)
Laurence Olivier became an international star for his smouldering Heathcliff and Merle Oberon won the part of Cathy despite Olivier’s objections (he wanted Vivien Leigh) in Samuel Goldwyn’s not entirely faithful (only the first 16 chapters were filmed), but typically lavish production of the famous novel. Director Wyler did all he could to keep the Goldwyn excesses at bay (apart from the tacked-on audience-friendly ending), and Gregg Toland’s Oscar-winning cinematography beautifully evoked Yorkshire’s windswept moors despite being shot in California. All in all, a perfect example of Hollywood’s craft. (Graeme Ross)

The Times explores Ponden Hall and talks with its present owners:

The history was part of the property’s appeal. Located only a few miles from the Brontës’ parsonage, Ponden Hall was visited frequently by the Brontë sisters and their troubled brother Branwell, who used the library. What’s more, the house is said to have inspired Heathcliff’s home: for the first illustrated edition of the book, the publisher George Smith wrote to Charlotte’s friend Ellen Nussey to ask her to identify the locations mentioned, so an artist could sketch them. She seems to have told him that, while the location for Wuthering Heights was at Top Withens, the interior is based on Ponden Hall. (Fiona Lensvelt)

Inspired by the exhibition at Tate Britain, Kathryn Hughes explores 'How Dickens, Brontë and Eliot influenced Vincent van Gogh' in The Guardian.

Van Gogh’s letters home to his family are crammed with references to classics that he had devoured during his time in Britain, including John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. His favourite author remained Charles Dickens, closely followed by George Eliot. Sharp-eyed art historians have pointed out that the night sky in the Rhône painting is a direct quotation from a scene in Dickens’s Hard Times, in which the secondary hero, Stephen Blackpool, gazes at a star as he lies contemplating his difficult life and imminent death.

The Guardian also looks into Amazon's star-ratings and reviews, which - surprise, surprise - are not that reliable. Among other things,

• Reviews for Wuthering Heights appearing under listings for Jane Eyre, and vice versa. (Hilary Osborne)

PopMatters reviews Randon Billings Noble's 'Be With Me Always, whose title is a reference to Wuthering Heights.

Part IV, "The Voice at the Window", opens with "Yet Another Day at the Jersey Shore", a beautiful slice of life Noble remembers with her grandmother. Again, she draws from great literature (this time James Joyce's story "The Dead") into her memories of a perfectly realized time from so many years ago. Her grandparents return in the essay "The Island of Topaz" (from part V, "Looking"), and Noble securely navigates through their history within the structure of a precious heirloom ring. In "Striking", Noble offers 20 fragments of thoughts that relate to the potential within a book of matches and the burning desires of Heathcliff and Cathy in Wuthering Heights:
"Strike a match and watch it burn. Strike a blow and crush the match. Strike a chord and burn with loss. Strike a deal and turn away." (Christopher John Stephens)

Bustle reviews the book Daily Rituals: Women at Work by Mason Currey.

In Daily Rituals: Women at Work, author Mason Currey explores the routines of 143 writers, painters, performers, musicians, directors, composers, and more. In fascinating detail, he reveals how famous women at the top of their fields live, work, and create, from the time of day they wake up to the type of food they eat to the kinds of superstitions they follow. And although each artist has a wildly different routine — the Brontë sisters, for example, gathered at 9 p.m. every night to discuss their works in progress, whereas Virginia Woolf couldn't stand to write in the evening — Daily Rituals reveals they have all faced the same kinds of obstacles, all rooted in sexism, gender inequality, and creativity bias. (Sadie Trombetta)

A contributor to The Boar makes the case for books deserving a second chance if you didn't like them when you first read them (probably at school).

I am someone who likes to reread my favourites because I feel like I understand something new with every reread, so I look forward to revisiting To Kill a Mockingbird in another five years’ time. For now I will try to revisit other books that I have previously written off now that I know the value of giving books a second chance. At the top of my list stands Wuthering Heights. Similarly to To Kill a Mockingbird, I started reading this Brontë classic in my mid-teens only to lose interest in Heathcliff and Cathy’s romance halfway through.
What I’ve taken from this experience is that whether you want to revisit a book you studied at school which lost its appeal after being over analysed, or a book you started but never finished, it’s always worth giving books a second chance. (Jasmine Dhesi)

Decider takes a new look at the film 10 Things I Hate About You, released 20 years ago.

Arguably the best scenes of this movie involve the verbal sparring matches between Kat and her English teacher Mr. Morgan (Daryl Mitchell). Instead of finding Hemingway romantic, like her classmate, Kat pounces on the opportunity to address the lack of gender diversity and “patriarchal values” that dictate the education system. Hemingway, she asserts, was an “abusive, alcoholic misogynist who squandered half of his life hanging around Picasso trying to nail his leftovers.”
She concludes that being male and an asshole makes someone worthy of students’ time, quickly suggesting Sylvia Plath, Charlotte Brontë or Simone de Beauvoir as valuable reading substitutes. Kat’s interest, clearly, is in literature – she’s seen reading The Bell Jar and knows exactly where The Feminist Mystique is located in the local bookstore – which means she possesses an abnormally elevated vocabulary. When Ms. Perky (Allison Janney), the student counselor, requests a synonym for the word “engorged,” Kat quickly provides an answer: “tumescent,” as though everyone should know. (Jake Kring-Schreifels)