Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

By 1909, Bronte films had begun to appear - there were four in 1915 alone and they have been coming thick and fast ever since.

Jane and Rochester - 2007 style...

Watch Laurence Olivier glowering as Heathcliff in the 1939 classic Wuthering Heights or Orson Welles playing Rochester to Joan Fontaine's Jane in 1944. This version of Jane Eyre bore the tagline: "A love story every woman would die a thousand deaths to live."

George C. Scott and William Hurt were amongst those who later played Mr R while Ralph Fiennes was Heathcliff in a version that makes use of the landscape. The Olivier classic never went outside the studio.

And then there was the Monty Python version of Wuthering Heights in which Cathy and Heathcliff signal their cries to each other in semaphore! More recently comedian Victoria Wood portrayed a guide who took her party around the Parsonage pointing at the "wuthering" views from every window.

Filming the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's 1962 version of Wuthering Height

Wuthering Heights seems to have had most success in crossing cultural barriers, but using very different interpretations. There is a 1954 Mexican version directed by Bunuel - Ajandero returns to the hacienda. In Japan the story is given a Samurai treatment.

There are also the Bronte sagas, dramatisations not of the novels but of the Brontes lives. The best of these is still the 1973 series, The Brontes of Haworth, starring Alfred Burke as the Rev Patrick Bronte. As a result visits to the Parsonage reached an all time high of 250,000 that year. Sadly we are still awaiting the film version of the 1931 book, The Brontes Go To Woolworths!

Thanks to the Bronte Society and the staff of the Bronte Parsonage Museum for their help with these pages.