Hurlevent

HURLEVENT is Rivette's impressive rendition of Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights". He shifted the action to the Cévennes and characterised by a wild, sun-drenched landscape where isolated farms can be several miles apart. He also introduced three dream sequences, the most impressive of which is interpolated in the middle of the movie and marks a turning point in the action, the three-year separation of Heathcliff/ Roch from Catherine. The blurring of frontiers between conscious and unconscious perception which is made tangible in this central oneiric scene allows a poignant insight into Catherine's psyche without any need for words. Rivette understood perfectly well that simplicity in the dialogues, locations and costumes was necessary to avoid the trap of over-dramatisation – into which the old period drama of 1939 (with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon) had fallen. (Viennale)