Abismos de pasión

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!

Abismos de pasión (1954) is Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, directed and co-scripted by Luis Buñuel.

This film was produced in Mexico, where Buñuel lived for 20 years as an exile from Franco's Spain. Believe it or not, the film works. Colonial Mexico in 1800 probably had many similarities to the rigid, socially conscious society of England at the same period. Buñuel's film is set in rural Mexico, in an region as isolated as the English moors.

Jorge Mistral plays Alejandro (Heathcliff), Irasema Dilián plays Catalina (Catherine), and Ernesto Alonso is Eduardo (Edgar). These actors were apparently popular Mexican stars of the time, and they play their roles with a ferocious intensity that fits Brontë's writing style.

The whole effort has an over-the-top quality to it, but, when you think about it, so does Wuthering Heights. Abismos de pasión isn't a film for everyone, but it's a must for Buñuel buffs.

Believe or not, this is the best adaptation of the marvelous and romantic story written by Emily Brontë in the Yorkshire Moors! Of course there are more faithful to the letter of the novel in those series made by the BBC long ago, but not the recent ones. The line story is so complicated that is very difficult for a movie to cover it fully. It's hardly believable that this Mexican movie does it so well as to be the best film on the subject, but that is the miracle of Art,

It doesn't belong to a place, but to all places, nor to a particular language, but to all languages. Buñuel's genius operates the miracle, aided by his excellent cast and team. This is the one version that captures the roots of Cathy's and Heathcliff's deep and contradictory emotions, the passions, the love and hate they shared and suffered, being all of them doomed to be unhappy in this world and hoping to be redeemed and united in the other. Placed in Mexico, black and white excellent photography, with a believable and intense cast, and a passionate, yet sometimes ironic direction, you must not judge before watching it. It is a great movie!

I just discovered, watched and reviewed this movie all in one day! I like the way Bunuel took the story of "Wuthering Heights" and made it his own, and I for one didn't miss the (drab and depressing) moors. This version went more for melodrama than a gothic atmosphere, and I enjoyed the difference. In this rendition, Catalina and Alejandro were separated more through family interference than her desire to join the world of the upper class, which makes her more sympathetic than Cathy. I can't say I approve of the way Alejandro treated Isabella, but his attitude seemed less cold and harsh than that of Heathcliff, at least to me.

The last scene was really powerful!

I could have done without all those dead butterflies, however.

11 reviews so far. Only.

You have to love Shakespeare, as they say, for having written the whole breadth of human characteristics in his pieces. Without any need to actually add any more.

You also have to love Bunuel for having done some movies that need nothing to be added, as long as they and humanity exist. This is the one on, at least, Wuthering Heights. Or, make it the impossible love.

The Spanish sense for drama, here shot in Mexico, add to the story of a man returning after years of absence to his one and only love. And does she still love him! But then, we are at the hands of Bunuel! Society kicks in with all rules, traditions, regulations, customs, boredom. And in the end, and this is what Bunuel develops so splendidly, all breaks down. And what we see, observe, is the path to this breakdown. Overwhelming love prevails through to the end, but remains unfulfilled. No, this is not a spoiler, we've known this from the book of the Brontés. Though, here we can watch its distillation, so to say, the essence.

Bunuel, as always, in principle loves all human beings around him, and yet brings out to the open all their inner limitations, frustrations, if not to say weirdness.

From its early scenes, when Alejandro returns and kind of invades the household of his by now married and pregnant love, an almost film-noir-like darkness with regular thunderstorms and scenes covered in rain, the futility of the setting becomes obvious. And, Bunuel-like, there are no heroes. Neither of the main personage is or becomes heroic.

Would I be any be better? I don't think so. Bunuel was a great psychiatrist, so to say, that he could see through all of us, and yet not despise us. Like in this movie. With minor exceptions, there is no principally bad person. They just all fell into a huge mixer and came out worse than they were in the beginning.