EMILY BRONTE FAME

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 19, 22 July 1939, Page 15

EMILY BRONTE FAME

REVIVAL IN "WUTHERING HEIGHTS"

/'Wuthering' Heights," the new picture at the King's Theatre, must be considered as, firstly, the picturisation of an early Victorian novel that caused bewilderment in its day; secondly, as an ; entertainment for people of these "advanced" Georgian times. On both counts, the picture makes good. Victorian critics found Emily Bronte's novel "Wuthering Heights" difficult to "place"; and no wonder, for the "placing" of it remains a matter of what you read into it. This elusive, quality is reflected in what is said of it, eighty years later, by the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," which describes "Wuthering Heights" as "a thing apart." The novel is "so charged with a significance which it is difficult to explain, that doubts of all kinds have grown up round it." Picturised in a manner that the authoress never foresaw, "Wuthering Heights" now emerges a mystic, eerie thing, and the doubts it raises are a large part of its attraction. To get the atmosphere of either the novel or the picture, it is helpful to remember the. Bronte tradition. An Irishman born in County Down became a clergyman on the Yorkshire moors in 1812, and had three literary daughters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte —who fought a long" struggle against the neglect, first of publishers, then of the public, yet who won to fame. For Emily it was posthumous lame. These three women were, all enigmatical, but the Encyclopaedia considers Emily "the most enigmatical and perhaps the greatest of the Brontes. . . . Her single novel, 'Wuthering Heights,' darkens rather than solves the mystery of her spiritual existence." So this film suggests a mystery within a mystery, for the characters in the novel and in the picture wander deep into the mystic side of life, and with them is wrapped- up the mystery of Emily Bronte herself, who died a spinster at the age of thirty (in 1848) and who never knew that in this present century it would, be written of her that "her place in English literature is sure and certain." To the peculiar personal factor of the Brontes was added the weird wildness of the Yorkshire moots, where they lived, and the result was "Wuthering Heights"—"passionately -sincere, unforgettable, haunting in its grimness, its grey melancholy." Emily Bronte passionately loved the moors, and it seems that she had had mystical experiences: combine the moors with this mysticism and with the Bronte insight into' human passion, and you have all the elements of a.great novel or a great picture. Lovers of the Bronte tradition will not need these explanations, but the foregoing may be useful to modern Georgians unversed in Victorian lore and unmindful of the great daring which a feminine novelist needed in order to produce a passionate novel eighty or ninety years ago. The soul of a woman, torn in twain between two men, and between two: ideals, was, dangerous ground in 1848; today, after the lapse of a century, a generation hardened to the literary vivisection of souls will still find the ordeal of the heroine to be full of human interest. Out on the. moors and on the hilltops with her base-born lover, she is one woman; in the ballroom, dancing "Sir Roger deOoverly," or in the drawingroom engaged, in fancy work, she Is another woman. With the approach of the base-born lover, the dutiful woman fades out and the other woman enters. There is a suggestion of personal magnetism or of irresistible fate. The earth life belongs to her husband, but one hour before her death is stolen by the lover, and the idea is conveyed that hex' after-life will belong to him and to him alone. On Merle Oberon falls the heavy task of being these two women (sometimes of. being both at once), and it cannot-be said that she performs poorly in. a role that would try the powers of the finest actress. Audiences who query-the remarkable j death scene may. be reminded that the Brontes were extraordinary people, and that Emily Bronte herself would not allow a doctor to be called till two hours before her own death in 1848. Concerning the work of Laurence Olivier as the irregular lover —some, times beaten, sometimes suppliant, later a revengeful tyrant, yet- ever stricken with remorse-—there can be nothing but praise, as might be expected from an actor of his distinction. A condoning husband, a dipsomaniac, a woman wjtio loved in vain, and many assistant parts are well performed by a talented supporting cast. . l"he atmosphere of occultism (ghostliness without ghastliness) is well imparted to the feature, and at deserves,. on all its [many merits, a successful run.