The Cinema of Spectacle

The 1939 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights , directed by William Wyler, produced by Samuel Goldwyn and starring Merle Oberon as Catherine and Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff, can be said to have initiated the screen tradition of Wuthering Heights , and, perhaps more importantly, established the novel’s ‘meaning’ in cultural terms ( Wuthering Heights , 1939). Although an earlier screen adaptation of Wuthering Heights was made in 1920 ( Wuthering Heights , 1920), it is this 1939 film that inaugurates the dominant screen tropes for later adaptations. 1 Part of the task then, of analysing this film is similar to that of analysing the novel: examining a ‘beginning’ that has already become a heavily defined ‘end’ as, arguably, the film that has been given the most critical attention and one that is inextricably bound up in the popular imagination with what the novel ‘means’. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.