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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Salesrank: 25103
Released: December 26, 2001 |
| Our Price: $4.97 |
| Used Price: $3.80 |
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MPAA Rating: G (General Audience)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Haunting, passionate and unforgettable, this lovely, scenically rich (Newsweek) version ofEmily Brontë's timeless masterpiece stars Emmy winner Anna Calder-Marshall and Timothy Dalton (Licence to Kill) as Cathy and Heathcliff, two star-crossed lovers destined for doomed romance. 'realistic [and] with authentic locations and atmosphere (Leonard Maltin), Wuthering Heights is a riveting, heartbreaking and beautifully realized telling of a classic. Inside the dark and austere farmhouse of Wuthering Heights, the impetuous Cathy first meets Heathcliffan orphan her father rescued from the streets of London. As the two grow up, they spend endless days exploring the sprawling moors of Yorkshire, eventually discovering in each other a fiery, powerful love. But when Cathy is introduced to their wealthy neighborsand promised to marry their son, her social equala fury is ignited within Heathcliff that can only be extinguished by one thing'revenge!
Wuthering Heights (1970) Reviews:
PATHETIC!!! Trashy Script. Stick With The 1939 Version. 
2009-10-16 - I saw this film version because I like Timothy Dalton, and wanted to see what he was like pre-Mr. Rochester & James Bond. Mr. Dalton was the only saving grace in this overblown production featuring a future Bond and Indiana Jones villain (Julian Glover). I did not sense any fire from Anna Calder-Marshall as Cathy, who looked a little too old for the role. I've yet to see the 1992 film version starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Bionche. The screenplay for this version was extremely bad, with the exception of one scene:-SPOILER AHEAD!!!-When Heathcliff (Timothy Dalton) and Isabella Linton are kissing aall the way through when Herathcliff escapes on horseback. I can't remember all the liberties taken, as it's been several years since I read the novel, but I COMPLETELY HATED THE ENDING TO THIS VERSION!!! SPOILER AHEAD!!! The villainous Hindley Earnshaw shoots Heathcliff, who dies soon after. SPOILER OVER!!! Apart from the scene not being in the book, it wasn't even filmed correctly. That scene completely destroyed what Ms. Bronte intended through the novel, and which the 1939 film version starring Merle Oberon as Cathy and Laurence Olivier, in his breakout role, as Heathcliff, conveyed: the torment of lost love. Not Rated, but I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS FILM VERSION. Stick with the 1939 version starring Merle Oberon & Laurence Olivier and directed by William Wyler (who also directed the Academy Award winner "Jezebel" the year before and would go on to direct "Ben-Hur," one of the greatest movies ever made)
Great Movie and wonderful acting 
2009-10-12 - This is a really great movie for anyyone who wants a good show. Timothy Dalton makes the best Heathcliff. His acting and the look in the movie is stupendous. Can't say the same for the rest of the cast as they all seemed a little over the top but they are not too bad in their roles. How I wish this movie was longer with the rest of the chapters of the book and not finished on an embellished ending.
Finally on DVD!!!!!!!!!!
2009-09-19 - I first saw Timothy Dalton in this version when it was at the Movie Theater. I purchased it on a VCR tape but couldn't wait for the DVD to come out. I also own the Merle Oberon one. But this one is an awesome version. Over the years I have seen it re-made with different actors and a remake ruins what the original story tried to say. I think this is the best version and next would be the Merle Oberon one. Timothy Dalton is amazing in his Heathcliffe role. Awesome!!!
A true Hollywood failure
2009-08-12 - I regard the above as the ultimate insult to an otherwise great author. She must be turning in her grave imagining what was done to her story that has so well endured through the years since its publication.
How can such alterations be stopped? It is hardly connected to the story at all -- what a waste of energy and resources. Even the actors were reduced to nullified subjects: no passion, only cheap sensationalism.
I wasted my money on this one, and so amen...
A Disappointment 
2009-07-20 - I first saw this movie when I was as teenager, maybe twelve or thirteen years of age. I was so affected by Timothy Dalton's performance as Heathcliff that it stayed with me all my life. When I later read the novel at fifteen, it was Dalton's face and performance that I envisioned with every word.
Thirty years have passed since I last saw this movie and I was curious to see it again and determine whether it held up. It did not. What a disappointment.
My only reason for giving this movie two stars instead of one is because it does capture the overall dark, tempestuous mood and setting of the novel...and because of Timothy Dalton's good (but sometimes erratic) performance. At first, I wondered what it was about Dalton's portrayal that so affected me as a youth. And then came the scene in Cathy's bedroom as she is dying. For those few moments--as Dalton clings to her and says "I could as soon forget you as my life. Are you not satisfied that I'm in hell already? ...Nothing in this world could have put us apart, but you of your own will did it. I have not broken your heart. You have."--I saw a vulnerable, anguished, heartbroken Heathcliff resurrected from Bronte's own words. Dalton perfectly captures Heathcliff's savagery and all-consuming love for Cathy. Other reviewers here have complained that Dalton overacts, but I disagree. Bronte's novel IS over the top--these two lovers are only reunited in death, after all--and I thought Dalton's histrionics fitting for that final scene with Cathy. I have seen the 1939 version but I've always felt that Laurence Olivier was too refined to play Heathcliff correctly. Heathcliff is supposed to be a sadistic brute--a tortured, wounded animal determined to destroy everyone and everything in repayment for his own suffering.
The problem is not with Dalton's acting; rather, it's with Cathy's. Anna Calder-Marshall fails to equal Dalton's passion and left me wondering what exactly Heathcliff found so compelling about her. Calder-Marshall is miscast as Cathy. She's neither willful nor magnetic. I thought she was just plain weird. The screenplay itself is terrible--did the screenwriter read the entire novel? Not even the inspired casting of Timothy Dalton can save a rotten script.
Finally, the gratuitous sexual references in this movie are a huge mistake that cheapen the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff instead of elevating it...and miss the whole point of the novel, which is that Cathy and Heathcliff's love is so extraordinary that it transcends the physical and earthly plane.
The only reason this movie is worth watching is to see Timothy Dalton. I still think he is the best Heathcliff cast to date. The real tragedy in this movie is not Cathy's death; instead, it is that Dalton was not given a script and a supporting cast that allowed him to live up to his promise.
