As is true of most men who've read Wuthering Heights, I did so only because it was forced upon me in high school. (Wuthering Heights and 17-year-old boys: Surely there is no greater possible mismatch of book and reader, and if there is a hell, countless English teachers deserve to be sent there for that reason alone.) William Wyler's film version of the novel at least has the advantage of being shorter, covering only the first half of the book, and ignoring entirely the second generation of Lintons and Earnshaws.
No, this version is all about the tormented love of Cathy and Heathcliff (Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, each indescribably lovely), if "love" is the appropriate word for their neverending cycle of "I love you, I hate you, I love you, I hate you" mindgames. Such romantic psychosis will inevitably have victims among the innocent bystanders, and our focus today is one of these -- Isabella Linton, as memorably portrayed by Geraldine Fitzgerald.
Isabella is the sister of Edgar, whose marriage to Cathy is one of the many weapons with which she strikes at Heathcliff; Heathcliff will marry Isabella for pretty much the same reason. (Neither Linton sibling realizes until it's far too late that their spouse doesn't really love them; emotionally speaking, the Lintons are not the brightest of families.)
Fitzgerald's portrayal is shaped to an unusually large extent by the directorial choices made by William Wyler; our perception of Isabella is formed by the way he places her within scenes, and by the small bits of action she is given. The first few times we see Isabella, she is always doing something for someone else -- fetching tea for Lockwood, bringing brandy to Cathy, chasing after the doctor to confirm his instructions. If we see Isabella enter the scene, we are certain to see her leave it; she's always exiting the room for some reason. And if she doesn't actually leave the room, she draws attention away from herself in some other fashion; in one striking moment, she sits near Cathy and Edgar, and reclines in her seat, taking herself out of the frame.
She is, in short, presented as a subservient and self-effacing woman, so when she gets her first major bit of dialogue after Heatchliff's first visit to the newly married Lintons, it's a shock. It's not just that we're hearing her speak, but that she's actually scolding her brother and his wife for their rudeness. A little bit of lust -- I refuse to call it "love;" this is the first time she's met Heathcliff, and they've been in the same room for less than two minutes -- has brought Isabella to life.
Once awakened, she's a bold and forthright woman, telling Heathcliff, "I shall let you hold my hand underneath my fan" -- hey, by Emily Bronte standards, that practically makes her a whore -- and flirting shamelessly with him. (I love her disappointed look of disgust when another woman sits beside her in the seat that she had meant for Heathcliff.) Suddenly, we realize that Isabella is lovely; she and Wyler have so skillfully kept us from focusing on her that we hadn't noticed it before.
Not only does Isabella change, but the way Wyler positions her in scenes begins to change. True, she still exits the scene after her balcony conversation with Heathcliff, but she takes him with her, and by the time we reach the bedroom scene in which she tells Cathy of her engagement, it's the other characters who leave the room, and for the first time, there's a fadeout on Isabella.
(Notice, though, that even this key event in Isabella's life is of interest primarily for its effect on others, which is as good a definition of a supporting character as I can think of. At the moment she announces her engagement, her back is to the camera, and our focus is on Cathy's reaction.)
Our brief glimpse of Isabella after her marriage to Heathcliff is shocking; gone are the bright eyes and radiant smile. This Isabella is a gloomy, brooding frump; she's dressed so somberly that we could easily mistake her for a widow. Gone is the flirtatious confidence of the courtship, replaced with a desperate, frantic desire to please. "I'll be your slave," she pleads, not realizing that she's only reminding him of happier days with Cathy.
Fitzgerald's performance is lovely to watch, and Isabella's progression from naive child to lively flirt to devastated wife is always convincing. Many actresses would have begged for something more to do in the first half-hour of the movie, but for me, the transformation is all the more powerful because Fitzgerald has the confidence to let the shy, quiet Isabella establish herself in the background.
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