Wuthering Heights

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 497, 31 December 1948, Page 8

Wuthering Heights

SOMEWHAT acclimatised by now, I sat down without a shudder to the premonitory and ominous howlings of tempest that preceded the third and final instalment of Wuthering Heights (almost pronounced Withering). At the end of the hour, having heard Hareton and Catherine sefely into one another's arms and Heathcliffe safe buried in the (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) quiet earth, I shook the willies from my shoulders and made myself a cup of strong tea. Wuthering Heights, concentrated into three hours, made strongly dramatic listening, but seemed to me, in spite of the atmospherics, to miss the emotional atmosphere of the novel. Any attempt to precis the original must result in strengthening to the verge of melodrama the already strong emotional material, and the suggestion of OldTime Theayter was heightened by Mr. Bernard’s addiction to the rolled "r." And the whole thing was of necessity speeded up, a process which made an improbable plot almost impossible. Young Catherine sprang from childhood to mafriage and widowhood in a quarter-of-an-hour, Birth wheeled in the characters by One door while Death stood ready to push them out the other. In spite of this, of course, the programme would be welcomed by those familiar to the novel, but those to whom it was an introduction to the author would be scarcely likely to pursue the acquaintance further.