Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights

Tonight's Stanford Theatre double-bill were adaptations of a couple of Brontë sister novels.

Jane Eyre (1944), based on Charlotte's novel of the same name, stars Joan Fontaine as the heroine who's sent to a cruel English boarding school by her guardian aunt, where she's molded into a "proper young lady", but still has her spirit and sense of honesty. After graduation she finds a job as a governess to young Adele (Margaret O'Brien, who outdoes her more-heralded performance in the same year's Meet Me in St. Louis), the French ward of the rich and eccentric Edward Rochester (Orson Welles). Despite their difference in class, Jane and Edward are attracted to each other, but Edward has a dark secret in his past, and something strange hidden in the tower of his castle, which threatens a tragic end to their story.

I admit I've never read Jane Eyre, so I have no idea how true-to-life this movie is. But, as a movie, it's pretty thin. For one thing, Joan Fontaine's performance seemed too one-dimensional, with a look of concerned sympathy seemingly frozen onto her face for the whole film. (I thought she was out-acted by the younger Jane, played by Peggy Ann Garner). This is a stark contrast to Welles, who gives one of his hammier performances; sort of Charles Foster Kane taken over the top, harrumphing his blustery way through the script with the occasional unconvincing apology for his manner, because "that's just the way he is".

Edward's dark secret is all too obvious from the beginning, but the death blow is that the full horror of the truth is denied the viewers; it's all kept just barely off-camera so we can't quite feel the emotions we're meant to feel, be they revulsion or pity or hatred.

The most admirable thing about the film is Jane's basic self image and self-confidence; she's a strong woman who says what she believes, no matter the (unreasonably steep) price she pays for it. It's not entirely rare for films of this era (after all, this was Katharine Hepburn's stock-in-trade), but it is unusually blunt for a period piece such as this.

Wuthering Heights (1939) is a very different film, perhaps because it comes from a very different book, by Emily Brontë. Cathy (Merle Oberon) and Hindley Earnshaw (Hugh Williams) are jointly raised with a young urchin named Heathcliff (Laurence Olivier), and early on, Cathy and Heathcliff fall in love. But Hindley is envious of Heathcliff, and when their father dies, he becomes master of their house (for which the film is named) he turns Heathcliff into a stable hand and himself becomes a tyrannical drunk. Cathy is torn between her romantic passion for Heathcliff, and her desire for a finer, more aristocratic life, and when Heathcliff is unable to give it to her - for he refuses to leave her to seek his fortune - she marries the nearby, richer Edgar Linton (David Niven, almost unrecognizable compared to his much later films, much as Vincent Price was in Laura). This finally does drive Heathcliff away, and he returns a rich man, buying out Hindley's debts to himself buy Wuthering Heights, but although he marries Edgar's sister Isabella, he and Cathy can never be together, and they both end up living and dying in abject misery.

I have read Wuthering Heights, albeit not since college, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. My recollection tells me that this is a pared-down version of the film, albeit a fairly faithful one as far as it goes, and certainly it grasps the essential emotions of the novel. (I think the novel was much more complex and involved yet another woman in the picture, but more than that I won't say, since you probably ought to read the book for yourself.)

Olivier is the emotional center of the film, of course, and he does a fine job, but he might not have pulled it off without an equally excellent performance by Oberon (who truly has one of the great screen names, and whom I've never heard of before). Besides her distinctive features, she's able to convey worlds of emotion with simple glances, as she and Olivier do during a party scene in mid-film. She also has the most challenging role of the film, as Cathy is an emotional roller-coaster for anyone close to her, figuratively torn apart by her various emotions, desires, and reasonings.

But while Cathy is a good woman who falls victim to her tragic flaws, Heathcliff is a deeply flawed man who struggles to rise above his darker nature, but is eventually overwhelmed by circumstances and his own passions. It's admirable that he couldn't stand to leave Cathy, but his inability to do so proves to be the implement which tears their lives apart.

The film's greatest flaw is that it ends too quickly, failing to truly follow the effect of events on Heathcliff's later years, and it ends with perhaps too sentimental a nod to the characters' love. Still, it's quite good despite that, as timeless tragedies often are even in altered form.