Emily Brontë's 1847 book, Wuthering Heights, is a classic book that many people will continue to read and love for years to come, but the movie adaptation, directed by William Wyler in 1939, hardly does the book justice. While the movie itself was good overall, when one compares it to the book, the movie just lacks so much that the book entails. The movie leaves out a lot of the story line that is very crucial to the story as a whole.
The book presents a very detailed and complicated story line. It gives us two generations of people at Wuthering Heights. The movie, on the other hand, leaves out the entire second generation of characters. I think the second generation of characters adds so much to the plot of the story that it needed to be included in some fashion. The movie presented a very simple story line that basically only dealt with the relationship of Heathcliff (Rex Downing/Laurence Olivier) and Catherine (Sarita Wooten/Merle Oberon). The movie did not even show that Catherine had a baby, and in the book that is why she died. I realize that, because of the time constraints of a movie, many things had to be cut and simplified; but I do not feel that leaving the second generation of people out does the movie justice.
Catherine having her daughter is very important to the storyline because her daughter does find the love that her mother did not get to live with. I think the second generation of characters helps to show that good things can come out of Wuthering Heights. The movie also cut out Heathcliff's life after Catherine died. I think that he went through so much torment after Catherine died that it needed to be included in the film to show just how unhappy he was at the end.
I think that movie just did not present the true Wuthering Heights saga because it left out so much that happened during Heathcliff's life. I found the movie to lack much of the detailed and complicated storyline that is crucial to the plot.