Wuthering Heights (1939) on Netflix
Mr. Earnshaw brings the orphan Heathcliff from the streets of Liverpool to Wuthering Heights, where Cathy welcomes him and her brother Hindley does not. Grown, they meet secretly on the moors.
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- Rotten Tomatoes96%
Trailer
Plot summary
Heathcliff is a boy living rough on the streets of Liverpool when Mr. Earnshaw takes him in and raises him at Wuthering Heights alongside his daughter Cathy and his son Hindley. Cathy comes to accept the foundling; Hindley does not, and after their father's death he puts Heathcliff to work in the stables. By the time the two are grown, Heathcliff and Cathy are in love and meet in secret at Penistone Crags. When they slip into a party at the Linton estate, a dog attacks Cathy and she is left in the Lintons' care for months. Edgar Linton proposes to her.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Wuthering Heights (1939)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, the film's Cathy and Heathcliff, detested each other; she scolded him for spitting on her during a romantic balcony scene, he shouted back calling her a "bloody little idiot", and she ran off the set crying until Wyler made him apologize.
- William Wyler shot one scene with Laurence Olivier 72 times, calling for each new take with nothing but "again!", until Olivier listed everything he had tried and asked how Wyler wanted it; Wyler replied: "I want it better."
SPOILER
Director William Wyler hated the after-life scene and didn't want to film it, but producer Samuel Goldwyn overruled him and had it added after primary filming was complete; with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon on other projects, doubles were used.- Vivien Leigh wanted to play Cathy opposite her lover Laurence Olivier, but studio executives thought she was too unknown in America and offered her the part of Isabella Linton instead; she declined and Geraldine Fitzgerald was cast.
- The Mitchell Camera Corporation picked cinematographer Gregg Toland and Wuthering Heights to be the first to use its new Mitchell BNC camera, which became a studio standard for half a century and the prototype of Panavision cameras.
SPOILER
David Niven, told to sob in Merle Oberon's deathbed scene, was given a menthol mist to fake tears; it instead sent "green goo" out of his nose and Oberon left the bed as soon as she saw it.- Wuthering Heights took the New York Film Critics Circle's Best Film award only after 14 ballots, possibly as a compromise in a long stalemate between supporters of Gone with the Wind and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
