英文影评:呼啸山庄（Wuthering Heights）
发布时间：2022-11-25 20:57:42
Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon take on the roles of Emily Bronte‘s star-crossed lovers in this 1930s adaptation of the classic novel
Samuel Goldwyn said that this was his favourite of all the films he produced. It received no fewer than eight Oscar nominations back in the days when that really meant something and critics have often said that it‘s the greatest romantic film ever made. Unfortunately, for modern audiences at least, it doesn‘t live up to these grand expectations.
The "vagabond gypsy boy" Heathcliff (played as a child by Rex Downing) arrives at Wuthering Heights and is taken in by the kind owner, Earnshaw (Kellaway). Heathcliff and the young Cathy Earnshaw (Sarah Wooton as the child) quickly become inseparable, though Heathcliff is loathed by the brattish Hindley (Scott) who spends most of his time horse-whipping him and throwing fake looking stones at his head. This is the weakest section of the film - the children slip in and out of American accents and Yorkshire burrs, the whiney, highly strung score is intrusive and the composition of the scenes is clumsy right down to the lighting (candles give off impossible light, shadows fall in the wrong direction). Fans of the book may have trouble accepting the camp, hammy Olivier as the dark and brooding Heathcliff and his performance lacks the power and bleakness necessary for a man consistently likened to "the devil himself". Furthermore, the landscape doesn‘t really look like Yorkshire and the screenplay is at first clunky and crude. Ben Hecht‘s and Charles MacArthur‘s episodic narrative jumps through the years at an alarming rate with clumsy interjections from a storytelling servant Ellen Dean (Robson) to keep slower audience members - and her entirely superfluous interlocutor Mr Lockwood (Mander) -abreast of what‘s going on.
Fortunately matters improve as time moves on and the action intensifies. Heathcliff disappears and Cathy (now played by Merle Oberon) breaks both their hearts by marrying the moneyed Edgar Linton (David Niven). There are some genuinely intense scenes and Oberon is consistently impressive as the wild yet vulnerable Cathy, while Olivier musters some tenderness for the tragic and impressive final scenes
The "vagabond gypsy boy" Heathcliff (played as a child by Rex Downing) arrives at Wuthering Heights and is taken in by the kind owner, Earnshaw (Kellaway). Heathcliff and the young Cathy Earnshaw (Sarah Wooton as the child) quickly become inseparable, though Heathcliff is loathed by the brattish Hindley (Scott) who spends most of his time horse-whipping him and throwing fake looking stones at his head. This is the weakest section of the film - the children slip in and out of American accents and Yorkshire burrs, the whiney, highly strung score is intrusive and the composition of the scenes is clumsy right down to the lighting (candles give off impossible light, shadows fall in the wrong direction). Fans of the book may have trouble accepting the camp, hammy Olivier as the dark and brooding Heathcliff and his performance lacks the power and bleakness necessary for a man consistently likened to "the devil himself". Furthermore, the landscape doesn‘t really look like Yorkshire and the screenplay is at first clunky and crude. Ben Hecht‘s and Charles MacArthur‘s episodic narrative jumps through the years at an alarming rate with clumsy interjections from a storytelling servant Ellen Dean (Robson) to keep slower audience members - and her entirely superfluous interlocutor Mr Lockwood (Mander) -abreast of what‘s going on.
Fortunately matters improve as time moves on and the action intensifies. Heathcliff disappears and Cathy (now played by Merle Oberon) breaks both their hearts by marrying the moneyed Edgar Linton (David Niven). There are some genuinely intense scenes and Oberon is consistently impressive as the wild yet vulnerable Cathy, while Olivier musters some tenderness for the tragic and impressive final scenes