Wuthering Height

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte's classic novel of doomed love between the brooding gypsy Heathcliff and the passionate, headstrong Cathy has been filmed many times. There was a Spanish-language version by Luis Bunuel, an Egyptian production in Arabic, and numerous television adaptations. But the definitive version is the one directed by William Wyler, and produced by Samuel Goldwyn.

A traveler named Lockwood (Miles Mander) is caught in the snow and stays at the estate of Wuthering Heights, despite the cold behavior of his aged host, Heathcliff (Laurence Olivier). Late that night, after being shown into an upstairs room that was once a bridal chamber, Lockwood is awakened by a cold draft and finds the window shutter flapping…

Gipsy boy Heathcliffe is adopted by a god-fearing landowner in northern England and grows up as the soul-mate of the daughter, Cathy Earnshaw. When father dies, stern son Hindley returns and bans Heathcliffe to the stables; when they spy upon their upper class neighbors, Edgar Linton sends the dogs upon them and chases Heath but starts an affair -love comes only from him- with her. When Hindley's socialite wife Frances dies in childbirth, he is completely embittered, becomes a drunk unable to care for his son Hareton and has to sell Wuthering Hights- to Heathcliffe. After a misunderstanding Cathy marries Linton, Heath retorts by a loveless match with his sister. Even Cathy's death doesn't stop the cycle of spite, grief and harm so it poisons the next generation's lives as well while she keeps haunting Heathcliffe…

An updated twenty-first century version of Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights", set in modern day Malibu, California, where the wealthy Earnshaw family adopts Heath, a troubled teenager. The Earnshaw's teenage daughter, Cathy, falls madly in love with him, embittering her rich friend, Eddie, and the rest of their exclusive, upscale community. Wrapped up in her exciting fling, Cathy is blind to the dangerous side of Heath, until it's too late.

In tone, this version of Wuthering Heights isn't dissimilar from grim, intense Shakespeare adaptation, with the howling wind and warring spirits of superstition and tradition.
Beautiful young Kinu Yamabe (Yuko Tanaka) is drawn to low-born Onimaru, who's vital and charismatic, but viewed by his father as a demon, and by most of the remaining family as a stain to the family name. But after her first period, Kinu suffers the fate of any women born near the Sacred Mountain: she must leave the Mountain and serve as priestess But she has a plan to stay near her old home - which involves marrying into a rival branch of her family.
Few Japanese films are as as exacting in recounting the details of custom and superstition as this, where the mores of everyday life are enforced by ritual and fate. This version, then, is a striking variation on the Bronte version, and completely convincing.