morrison-dylan-fan Searching round online a few weeks ago for details about surreal film maker Luis Bunuel's (co)-directing debut L'age d'Or,I was astonished to find out that Bunuel had actually film a near-forgotten adaptation of the Emily Bronte novel Wuthering Heights.With a fellow IMDb'er having told me for months about various adaptations of Bronte's novel (which I've not yet read!) that she has enjoyed,I felt that it was the perfect time to join up with Bunuel,and to enter Bronte's wuthering world for the first time.The plot:Mexico:1800-Returning to Mexico after a number of years,Alejandro decides to pay a visit to the villa where he used to work as a servant for a family.Due to Alejandro having professed his love for the families foster daughter Catalina,the main refuses to allow him in.Not taking no for an answer,Alejandro goes around to the back of the villa and breaks a window in,so that he can finally get a sight of Catalina for the first time in years.Unexpectedly stopped in his tracks,Alejandro is met head on by a towering figure called Eduardo,who along with being the owner of the villa,is also Catalina's husband.Ignoring Eduardo's demands for him to leave,Alejandro rushes to Catalina,who tells Alejandro that she is still passionately in love with him.Delighted at hearing her expression of love Alejandro tells Catalina that she can join him,and that they can run away together.Destroying all of his dreams,Catalina tells Alejandro that despite being deeply in love with him,she is unable to runaway,due to being pregnant with Eduardo's child.Furious at Catalina's 'betrayal',Alejandro decides to get revenge by taking advantage of the mass gambling debt that her brother Ricardo has made,by agreeing to pay off his debt,if Ricardo agrees to sell his ranch and to become Alejandro's servant.As he begins to settle down in Ricardo's ranch,Alejandro notices that Eduardo's sister Isabel appears to be attractive to him.Striking Eduardo and Catalina where he knows it will hurt most,Alejandro quickly gets together with Isabel,and a few days later begins making plans for their marriage.Despite each of them attempting to tear the other one apart,Alejandro and Catalina soon discover that not even death,can fan the flames of their love.View on the film:Whilst the guy is not exactly the first person that comes to mind when I hear the term 'Old Romantic', (with him including some scenes of a butterfly getting killed so that the audience can see what a big softy at heart he is!) the dedication that co-writer/(along with Pierre Unik,Julio Alejandro and Arduino Maiuri) director Luis Bunuel gave to getting his adaptation of Emily Bronte's novel on to the big screen, (Bunuel had been attempting to film the novel since 1931!)shows itself to have been worth all of the effort,thanks to Bunuel perfectly balancing Bronte's tornado Romance with a chillingly mysterious,shadow socked Gothic Horror atmosphere.Backed by Raul Lavista's stirring score,Bunuel reveals his doom-laden world by having raindrops scatter across the screen as the thunder in in the background matches Alejandro harsh knocks at the villa's door.Along with the scattering rain,Bunuel also allows shadows to gradually cover the character's faces,which along with giving the title a strong Gothic Horror bite,also perfectly shows the brutal,horror monster like attitude that all of the character's have for each other,with Bunuel displaying the characters lust for power to be something that is covered in doom which blocks anyone from seeing the deadly path that they are unknowingly on.Giving the movie a vicious swipe of Bronte's Romance,Bunuel brilliantly combines his Gothic Horror atmosphere with a strikingly stylized tornado romance,as Bunuel shows in chilling clarity the distance that Alejandro and Catalina will go in order to archive their ever last romance,with the grim,oddly romantic final moments being enclosed around a Gothic Horror shine which Catalina and Alejandro finds they are unable to break out of,even in death.Despite only being placed in the movie due to producer Oscar Danciger being desperate to end their contracts after a planned Musical Comedy of his had failed to enter production, (which would lead to Bunuel moaning about how none of them were any good) each of the actors give superb performances,with Irasema Dilian and Jorge Mistral each bringing contrasting elements to Alejandro and Catalina doomed romance,thanks to Mistral showing Alejandro's lone cry desperation to strike Catalina where it hurts,whilst the very pretty Dilian shows that Catalina is prepared to strike back,but has to pull her punches due to the conflicting feeling that she shares for Alejandro and Eduardo.Joining Dilian and Mistral,Ernesto Alonso gives a delightfully curled lip performance as the out of his dept Eduardo,whilst Luis Aceves Castaneda gives a charmingly bonkers performance as the half craze Ricardo.Avoiding the risk of the movies edges being worn down by the 24 years that it took to get made,the writers give their adaptation a deliciously spiky quality,by showing all out the character's being unwilling to compromise their desires,which along with giving each of them a grotesque edge,also allows the writers to use Alejandro and Catalina's failure to compromise as a method to give the title a tragic,romantic tap.Placing Alejandro and Catalina's relationship at the centre,the writers brilliantly take a reverse psychologically route in Alejandro attack's by showing each of Alejandro vicious strikes to be something that digs deeper into his and Catalina's veins,as Alejandro and Catalina begin to discover how turbulent their wuthering relationship has become.

MARIO GAUCI Emily Bronte's immortal Gothic romance has always had a place in my home: an illustrated comic-book abridgment for children that, unwisely, my Dad once took to school with him met with the misplaced ire of his Headmaster, tearing it in half and claiming that reading comics was a waste of time! – my Dad diligently taped the thing back together again and still owns that sutured copy to this very day; thanks to recurring screenings on a now-defunct Sicilian TV channel, the classic 1939 film version (to the undersigned, still multi-Oscar-winning director William Wyler's finest achievement) was one of the very first examples that got me acquainted with 'the golden age of Hollywood'; and I even had to study the original text when sitting for my English "A" level exams!According to the IMDb, there are in all 35 adaptations of WUTHERING HEIGHTS for film or TV and another one should be hitting theaters next year! Apart from the aforementioned Wyler, at least three other notable film-makers tried their hands at transposing Bronte's tale of doomed love onto the screen: Luis Bunuel (in Mexico in 1954), Robert Fuest (in England in 1970, which I should be watching presently) and Jacques Rivette (in France in 1985). Although it might seem surprising that an iconoclast like Bunuel came to be involved in making a film out of such a popular 'women's novel', it becomes possible once one realizes how much its all-enveloping theme of "l'amour fou" made it a favorite of the Surrealist movement.Indeed, Bunuel had already adapted it into a screenplay back in 1931 but only after his career was getting back on its feet, trudging in the generic Mexican film industry, was he able to obtain the necessary finance to shoot it. Not that he did not have to make compromises in realizing his long-gestating vision: in fact, Bunuel was displeased with his two leads (who were unceremoniously foisted upon him by his producer when a proposed musical comedy project fell through!). Revisiting the film again after three years, while I concede that they did not exactly rise up to the demands of their roles, they were adequate enough under the circumstances – with Irasema Dilian making for a compulsively impulsive Catalina and Jorge Mistral (the spitting image of Victor Mature!) a feral Alejandro forever smashing through windows. Perhaps as a consequence of this, the film takes care to give ample screen-time to the other characters apart from the central couple; in fact, the cast is rounded up by Bunuel regulars Ernesto Alonso (as Catalina's fey butterfly-collecting husband Eduardo) and Lilia Prado (as Alejandro's long-suffering wife Isabel), as well as Luis Aceva Castaneda (as Catalina's brutish brother Ricardo). The latter, perennially drunk and penniless, treats his own son as badly as he had treated Alejandro as a kid, or as Alejandro does now to his own wife. Besides, in true Bunuel style, Ricardo's two-faced servant (played by Francisco Reiguera, the Don Quixote of Orson Welles' infamously aborted venture!) is heard constantly reciting passages from the Holy Bible!To counter any shortcomings in the acting department, Bunuel turns the film into one of his most visually striking works – never more so than in the literally explosive graveyard finale (an invention of the film-makers, by the way) that is the literal embodiment of the Surrealist ethos of sex and death: Alejandro, sobbing inconsolably on his beloved's tomb, imagines the gun-toting silhouette of Ricardo to be a wedding-dress-clad Catalina beckoning him and proceeds to get half his face blown off by the vengeful foster-brother! It is such a powerful image that it has haunted me ever since I first saw it projected at the National Film Theatre in London in January 2007 – following that which remains the most memorable theatrical screening I have ever attended, where a double dose of UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929) and L'AGE D'OR (1930) left the 700-strong audience literally stunned in their seats for minutes on end…long after the lights came on again and almost until WUTHERING HEIGHTS itself was about to start!Bunuel's adaptation, retitled "Depths of Passion", is effectively transposed to Mexico and opens on a shot of buzzards lying in wait upon barren trees. The narrative also starts half-way through Bronte's novel – with Alejandro returning as a wealthy man and the entire depiction of his mistreatment as a child at the hands of Ricardo discarded. The recurring Wagner music, previously used in L'AGE D'OR, was intended only for the finale but, absenting himself to Cannes during post-production, the director was shocked to discover that the composer had utilized it all through the film! Unlike a Bunuel scholar like Francisco Aranda – who, in 1975, wrote that "it is a masterwork from start to finish" – I do not consider WUTHERING HEIGHTS to be as successful an adaptation of a famous literary piece as ROBINSON CRUSOE (1952; the other Children's Classic Bunuel filmed in Mexico) but I can hardly disagree that it is "a film that is entirely worthy of its director" as film critic Claude Beylie opined. Indeed, the incestuous, irrational 'from-beyond-the-grave' love of Alejandro and Catalina links this film with the Julien Bertheau segment in the much later Bunuel classic THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY (1974). It is no wonder, then, that the director considered Henry Hathaway's similarly ethereal romance PETER IBBETSON (1935) as being "one of the ten best films ever made"! Despite the popularity of the source novel and the legendary reputation of its director, this Mexican version of WUTHERING HEIGHTS is largely unknown today. It was shown only once in the distant past in my neck of the woods but, lately, it has become a staple of Saturday nights on one particular Italian TV channel. Incidentally, I had previously acquired a copy of it where the English subtitles refused to work but, thankfully, that was eventually replaced!

Reese Francis Like most of Bunuel's works, the main (and also the most interesting) layer of this film is the mental one. Yes, there are lots of dialogs, but it can be easily watched without hearing a word, due to Bunuel incredible talent of telling stories, feelings, fears, desires and lust exclusively through images. Only a bunch of directors are capable of achieving such a purity in visualization.Abismos de pasiòn is a very classical story, filtered through Bunuel's will to further inspect desire (both sexual and mental). Alejandro is clearly ruled by his passion and instincts; characteristic which is praised by Bunuel, envying it.

jcappy The key distinction, I think between Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" and Bunuel's is his more psychological/surreal framework. Although both present a heroine who is insistently independent, special, and almost emotionally omnipotent, Catalina is more contracted from the world and its influences than is Catherine. Bunuel begins in medio with Alehandro's return, and ends with his murder, an invented climax that considerably heightens the romance and condenses plot and characters. From a more expressionistic setting emerge more deeply discontinuous characters that seem fated by some universal imperative. The adults are repressive, the youthful repressed. There is no room in this cruel worldview for passion, let alone a burning love. And the only beauty resides in some other dimension--which must begin with death, an existence elsewhere, toward which both Catalina and Alehandro are almost compelled--by the depth of their consciousness--to pursue.Bunuel links sex and death as Catalina and Alehandro are literally buried in the same coffin, the path of reason and survival refused for a momentary connection or the chance of some profound existence--the big heat of the finale literally eclipsing all other characters and the whole world of logic--Ricardo a mere instrument of their self-immolation. Their end, their madness is dramatic and glorious, as if a victory over the sources of repression and mere survival. And Bunuel's admiration falls in with their passionate embrace.Bronte's Catherine story is longer, offering her more space, more history, and more meaning---which lives on and changes through the lives of others after her death. In her novel, there is a greater demarcation between adults and youth. Adults are the oppressors, while children and adolescents are the oppressed and the rebels. Catherine uncompromisingly embraces these two roles--almost eternalizing them, and thus giving herself no options for maturation into adulthood. She is the willful child who finds adults a despicable lot, the division between herself and them inevitable. But Bronte offers a degree of context to this: the early death of Catherine's parents, and Heathcliff's oppressed outsider status, for example. Nonetheless, none of the adults in the novel break the cold mold she has set for them. And Catherine's fiery nature sets her on a path toward death.Heathcliff is almost an invention of her passionate mind, a mind which is as about as unoriginal as she thinks it original. Not only is she into love sop, but into the masculinized, heroic male against which Edward is puny, virtuous, and spiritless. (Alehandro is the kind of male Bunuel favors, whether invented or real) Nonetheless, Catherine finds a way to reign in his power by imagining and encouraging him to be under her sway. (a conformity hard to believe especially in the Bunuel version) "He's more myself than I" she says, as her internal isolation begins to be more than a match for her external isolation. And as her fictive powers grow more potent, her mind is more jeopardized until the enormity of the mirror scene which leaves her with a sense of being totally alone--and mad.But if Bunuel glorifies his heroine and hero, Bronte seems more guarded. Yes, Catherine and Heathcliff are superior and romantic, but life goes on without them, and perhaps a more promising life. For Catherine's daughter and her brother's son, who alone remain after the deaths of Edward, Heathcliff, Hindley and Linton, seem to be entering a bigger, more realistic world which promises a softening of the self-destructive impulse that characterized their parents lives.