ABISMOS DE PASIÓN / WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1954)

With dozens of film & tv iterations over the decades, there’s a version of Emily Brontë’s dark tale of caste, lust & pride to please just about anyone.  (Heck, you could even read the novel!)  And while they all skip much of the book’s plot, few skip more than Luis Buñuel in 1954, transplanted to  Mexico and making do with what other adaptations consider the third act.  This means we pick up Heathcliff (here called Alejandro) as he returns a wealthy man, hoping to exact revenge on the rich country family that abused him when he was little more than a foundling stableboy.  His monomania leading him to drive love-of-his-life Cathy/Catalina mad for settling into a companionate marriage with that lily-livered scion across the valley.  But if much of the plot has gone missing, what remains is more of the dirty passion beating in everyone’s heart (largely for the wrong person) than you’ll find elsewhere, and the romance of personal destruction at any cost.  (As well as a disturbing series of animal murders: buzzards shot; butterflies ‘pinned’ for preservation; frogs burned alive as purification ritual; pigs slaughtered . . . death surrounds us.)  Made with a cast assembled for some other canceled movie (apparently a Mexi-Musical), Buñuel didn’t much like the results.  But the acting, if very broad, is also, very effective in its black-and-white manner, the story all but taking care of itself .  Brontë might have approved.  And you adjust to its abrupt tempo & raw tone as it goes along.  Perhaps not the only HEIGHTS you need to see, but one you won’t want to miss.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: William Wyler’s Hollywood classic from ‘39 holds up better than you remember.  With enough of the story to help make sense of Buñuel’s eccentric take. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/05/wuthering-heights-1939.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: While rarely a good idea to coast on the emotional overload of Richard Wagner, especially repetitive chunks of TRISTAN & ISOLDE, it works about as well here as Wagner’s Ring Cycle did backing John Boorman’s EXCALIBER/’81.