""Heathcliff! It's me, Cathy, I've come home now..."" The good news is there's no sign of Kate Bush in this superlative adap of Emily Brontë's novel - - or Sir Cliff Richard for that matter, surely the most unconvincing Heathcliff in stage history.
No, this is William Wyler's 1939 version, with Larry Olivier at his broody best as the spurned outcast whose destructive passion for Cathy (Merle Oberon) dooms them both.
Dumping half the book and swapping the Yorkshire moors for some California scrubland doesn't hurt the movie as much as it should, though a coda showing the ghostly lovers romping through the heather certainly does. No matter: with David Niven and Flora Robson padding out the cast, Citizen Kane's Gregg Toland behind the camera and Sam `Include me out!' Goldwyn producing, this is prestige filmmaking from Golden-Era Hollywood.
DVD Extras:
None.
