Month: May 2025

By Emilia Brookfield-Pertusini

When the moon slivers right in silver, and the cloud crowd around, expect to see the silhouette etch its away on the window. The gas hue of the lamp dances around the curtains, flirting with the supersonic glow of the TV. Mugs jingle. A smile creeps out. Rows of books, obscured by trinkets, memories, and the private and confidential. And all of this transmutes from your night-in by the fire side, to the kick inside of the footsteps, that stop momentarily, tying a shoe or checking their phone?, and feed off that light. The eyes that widen and feast whilst hands remain in pockets and lips blister in the chill, take the tableau in delight. You are being watched. Let us feast on your existence.

Inventory taken of your surface existence, let’s turn those eyes up, give them a real wedding breakfast. If those eyes were to take their shoes off by the door, weerily sigh as the keys clatter in the dish, and yawn and stretch towards the kettle, where do you expect them to go? A quick rummage through the notes on the fridge, a glance at the calendar, a poke through the medicine cabinet. But you curated your quarters so well, and wouldn’t you rather they dine on the print you choose to hang just there, or even at the way you placed the fruit in the bowl. How could these eyes be so cutting, so searching for clues in an investigation only Kafka could decipher, rifle through your home, your heart, your legacy of objects. Why, they delight in this seeing the mudnade objectivity of your existence, how perverse! But I gave you things to look at, some entertainment here and there, why must you devour all of me now – slurping the last drops of the tea from the pot like that gruesome teatime tiger expecting to be satiated from the stewed embers. Please, dear eyes, leave. Bolt the door behind you, and please, don’t come back here, just look at the way the window sill changes for you, and be content with that.

5th of February, 2025. My 21st birthday. And what better present, for a girl like me, to receive the news that Joan Didion’s therapy notes could soon belong to me. Isn’t this the news we have all wanted since her death? Finally, a chance to take stock of this brilliant mind, to really understand her. The literary community yelped.

Joan Didion is one of the US’s most defining writers. With needle-like precision she dissected America’s later 20th century. Her unrelenting commitment to journalism has rendered her with a wry, poignant voice, even its novelistic utterances. However, whilst she captured the world around her in her words, preserving the cultural offshoots and fascinations of America for us to gawk and examine like limbs in formaldehyde, Didion never quite captured herself. Her essays and articles harbour an essence, fleeting and distinct; like a stranger’s perfume as they walk past, we know it’s there but what is it, and where did it come from? From the Sharon Tate murders to the LSD shrouded Haight-Ashbury district, we locate a vision of Didion from the cultural landmarks she fashions herself around. This highly curated double-exposure of both author and object has enshrined Didion as the defining figure of a generation and that ‘California belongs to Didion’ without actually revealing the intricacies of being the woman who keenly observed the West Coast zeitgeist .

Did Didion pre-empt the sudden urge we would have to dissect, to own, that voice presented to us, thus her careful consideration of what she wanted us to know. She was a keen follower of Hemmingway, learning to structure sentences to the same acute precion by laboriously studying the very syntax and rhythm of them and synthesising this with her own literary vision. Everything she did was careful, precise, and exactly how she wanted to say it. Therefore, to leave something out in Didion world is not merely forgetfulness, or not being able to work it in, or being embarrassed, but a clear message about what she does and does not want us to see. Noli me tangere, for Didion’s I am. Her two most autobiographical works, My Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights, continue to approximate Didion in relation to what is around her. As her world becomes swallowed by the shock of her husband’s sudden death, the continual murmuring anxiety of her daughter’s life and upbringing, the beeping of heart monitors, the gare of x-ray prints, the calendar squares with the sames of different hospitals and departments, we see Didion reconfigure her world on these terms, showing us her life in the truest forms, unsensational and unsympathetic.

The word raw enjoys being thrown around the confessional, personal writing scene. This piece was raw as when I cut into it all that came out were tears, and blood, and guts, and juice. Maybe Didion saw that the rawest piece is the one that submits to be cut into and exposes a fleshy marbling, the blood shocked still in the veins. This craving for the ‘raw’ – the supposed real – voice behind the author has led to the letters and diaries of most of the canon to be available. Reading another’s diary no longer feels like sneaking about into another’s bedroom, searching under the bed, the dresser, the piles of clothes, and cracking the code, but a right we expect to receive; why write and not publish it for us, your peanut crunching crowd. The harrowing entries of the Plath journals show one of the fiercest writers of the 20th century at her most fragile. She speaks of an immeasurable, unrelenting pain, that she attempted to make sense of through her nightly writing campaigns to her ferocious psyche. The readiness we are to access them leaves a sour taste in the mouth, as we realise the perverse voyeurism on display as we are delivered an author’s life on a slab.

I am by no means a literary critic, no less one who believes in the autonomy of the text and the death of the author. Life informs art, afterall. But, when reading Plath’s diaries do I really get a better sense of the pain trapped between her lines? Does knowing that Woolf ate an egg or some beef or a trifle on the same day she began to pen Orlando help us unlock the text? Probably not… The ownership of the diary is a grab to owning the author; we hold their lives in our hands and scrutinise the mundane details they flourish poetically attempting to figure them out. Didion was a mother and wife as well as the writer and icon that emerges in her writings. Her careful curation of self to ensure her other selves only appeared under her watch, her direction, her discretion, was an attempt to assert herself as a public writer with an enchanting capability to fascinate and entertain with her pen, not a public figure whose life fascinates us. The intimacy of Notes to John goes against the constructed self that Didion intended.

Anais Nin, storing her diaries in a bank vault (supposedly). The holy relic of the author’s diary is pestered by prying eyes.

By Nathan Gellman

Art is often described as a window into the mind and soul of the artist. Whether on paper, sheet music, or canvas, the true emotion and meaning behind pieces of art are on full display. Music is no different; at its best it captures not just a perfect performance but a moment of emotional truth.

However, in a time when overproduction is sucking the life out of modern music, we the listeners are flocking to live shows to feel a connection with the artist that used to project through sitting rooms on vinyl, cassette and CDs. 

I’m not suggesting that I have found a substitute for seeing your favorite artist live but through my discovery of my favorite artist’s early takes and demos, I have a newfound appreciation for his work and process. Demos provide an unexpected intimacy and emotional experience of hearing a stripped-down, natural take of your favorite songs. Therefore, I challenge you, the reader and listener, to embrace demos and take in the rawness, vulnerability, and authenticity within them.

Demos are a rough, often first take of a song used to capture an initial musical idea, contrasted to a studio single it is dirty, unproduced, and not aiming for commercial perfection, merely expressing the artists’ viscerality. Demos preserve the artists’ creative spark before it is extinguished during production. 

My personal affection towards demos came upon my discovery of George Harrison’s ‘Early Takes Volume 1’ which was released in 2012. It compiles demos, the majority of which were recorded during the ‘All Things Must Pass’ sessions. I fell in love with the album as a result of Harrison’s unfiltered voice, emotional closeness and the offhand remarks that bookend some tracks which made me feel like a fly on the wall during the recording sessions, privy to the secret moments most listeners never hear.

A couple of tracks stand out as prime examples of the unique strengths’ demos have to offer. Awaiting on You All is one of my favorite Harrison songs, with it being one of his most religious and spiritual. The master recording of the song is busy and vibrant with an all-star personnel of Harrison, Eric Clapton and Klaus Voormann to name a few. However, the heavy use of reverb really melts the sound into a buzz with it difficult to hear the individual instruments throughout the song. The early take strips this all back and sounds almost unrecognizable compared to the master. You are no longer listening to a catchy pop-rock song but a man expressing his devotion to God with the help of his guitar.

Among Harrison’s most spiritual songs is My Sweet Lord, his debut single and biggest chart hit. A song in my eyes which is perfect, an exposed cry to God, presenting himself as one of the most famous and accomplished people in the world – simply, a vulnerable devotee. While there is nothing to improve on, in my opinion the demo really highlights the devotion Harrison had through the tenderness of his voice accompanied by his acoustic guitar. 

But why do these distinctions matter, why should you care about these mostly subtle differences? 

I believe demos and early takes allow for more emotional honesty, making the artist, someone who themself is followed and loved more human, through presenting their truth to the listener with no interference from middlemen. Demos feel like a discovery, something you find in your attic that you weren’t supposed to hear. It is an artist’s raw talent that separates them from you and I, and demos through showcasing their natural talent demonstrate this fact.

Demos such as Harrison’s ‘Early Takes Volume 1’ remove the layers of master recordings and remind us that sometimes the first take says it best. In an age of overproduced music, demos stand as a stark reminder that sometimes less is more.  

By Edward Bayliss

Dan Richter arrived in the UK in the mid-1960s as ‘a 28-year-old, starving, mime teacher’, ready to absorb all that London, ‘the centre of everything new’, had to offer. Upon his arrival, he edited the avant-garde poetry review Residu, and performed in the 1965 International Poetry Incarnation at the Albert Hall amongst Beat Generation poets William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. On October 24^th, 1966 Richter first met Stanley Kubrick, the man who would select him for the role of Moonwatcher, the central ape in 2OO1: A Space Odyssey’s ‘Dawn of Man’ sequence (and ask him to choreograph it). From 1969-1973, Richter would become personal assistant to John Lennon and Yoko Ono, helping shoot the video for ‘Imagine’ at Tittenhurst Park, and later work with the Rolling Stones to produce their concert film, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones. Richter has since worked with production companies in LA, continued to teach mime, and has climbed over 600 North American peaks. 

I met him on Zoom for a 45 minute discussion of his time from 1966-1968, and working with Stanley Kubrick on what many consider to be the most influential film ever made, 2OO1: A Space Odyssey. 

It’s 10:00am LA time and the morning sunlight is coming across Dan’s sitting room, lighting his face kindly. He is 85 years old and undergoing chemotherapy for T-Cell Lymphoma. These facts do not show. His warm temperament and strong constitution translate easily through my laptop screen. I begin by asking him about his experience at the American Mime Theatre, his decision to travel to England, and how he came to be involved in 2OO1. Richter tells me he had ‘studied ballet’ and could ‘dance easily’ – he was a ‘natural, and could just do it’ – so that when he arrived at the American Mime Theatre under the tutelage of Paul Curtis, he was ‘the lead performer’ within a year. After four years, and having seemingly exhausted the potential that the AMT offered, Richter ‘wanted more’ and notes how ‘mime wasn’t as big in the States as it was in Europe’. Working in mime in the US  had become a tireless exercise of going to ‘cocktail parties to flatter rich people so you could get grants […] There’s gotta be more!’, says Dan. Subsequently, he took a leave of absence to study ‘mimetic forms’ around the world, travelling to Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, India, and Japan, where he made friends with Yoko Ono, who exposed Richter to ‘conceptual art’. ‘I did not want to go back to the States again, I wanted freedom […] to experiment, and live’, Dan adds triumphantly. After ‘falling in love with a woman who claimed to be a Russian princess in India’, he ‘followed her to Athens’ and ‘met all these poets’ which led him eventually to London where he began editing a poetry review, Residu, with his then wife Jill while beginning to teach acting classes. During his poetry reading with ‘Allen [Ginsberg] and all these crazy people’ at the Albert Hall, he met producer and poet Johnny Esam  (who ‘was friends with a friend of Sir Arthur Clarke’). ‘Arthur [who co-wrote the screenplay of 2OO1] and Stanley Kubrick had realised they didn’t have the opening of the movie – they had shot all the live action, and they had tried all kinds of things […] and nothing worked’, Dan recalls. They hadn’t, as Richter explains, explored the possibility of using a mime to choreograph the now famous ‘Dawn of Man’ sequence. Johnny, a mutual friend of Dan and Arthur’s, knew that ‘Stanley was looking for a mime’, and set into motion the next two years of Dan’s life: ‘I know the best mime around, it’s Dan Richter.’

When Dan met Stanley soon after, he says that he ‘asked for a stage, a leotard, and a couple of towels to stuff in my shoulders and he [Stanley] was very impressed’, having witnessed an improvised ape performance from Richter. ‘I was offered the job on the spot. That’s how I got the job.’ Dan’s process of mime acting is very particular: ‘my training was that we developed movement from the acting process first – you start with the motivations and characters and feelings, and you extend those.’ For Richter, the objective of the character informs the activities of the character. This was the basis of Richter’s approach to embodying Moonwatcher. 

The ‘Dawn of Man’ sequence is set in the Pleistocene epoch, about three million years ago; I ask him how he went about realising a time and place so far from him. Dan reminds me that archaeological discovery has come a long way since the 1960s: ‘In those days, very little was known […] I researched as much as I could, but I realised I had to make living creatures.’ Kubrick had located his ape species as the Australopithecine (discovered by Raymond Dart in the 1920s) who existed in South Africa at the time of the ‘Dawn of Man’s’ setting. Richter tells me that he ‘endlessly watched footage of Jane Goodall’s chimps and read about Diane Fossey’s gorillas and did piles of research.’ In his book, Moonwatcher’s Memoir, Dan goes into great detail of his interactions with ethologists, museums, the Royal Geographical Society and other bodies of information that would inform his understanding of the Australopithecine ape. Dan tells me that he ‘had to have a costume that would allow us to be expressive, not just the Michelin man with black hair all over you, all stuffed and puffed up.’ It was only with the assistance of now legendary make-up artist Stuart Freeborn (who would design and fabricate many key characters in the Star Wars franchise, including Yoda and Chewbacca), that they could realise a realistic costume that could function under dynamic movement. 

The ape that Richter plays, Moonwatcher, acts as a kind of proto-representative of the Biblical Cain figure, becoming a symbol of the evolution of human nature through violence. This evolutionary movement across millions of years is delivered through the most famous match cut in film history, from Moonwatcher’s bone to the weapons satellite. I ask Dan if he was conscious of the gravity of this moment within the context of the film. ‘The script was very sparse, very sparse’, Dan reiterates. He adds that ‘Stanley rarely talked about the big stuff, the big ideas – he didn’t want to put ideas into your head that would get you trying to do stuff, he was always concerned with each beat at a time.’ Though this may have been the case, Richter does acknowledge that Kubrick and Clarke were aware of a ‘Killer Ape Theory’ developed by Robert Ardrey in 1961, which postulated the idea that ‘early man started to progress when he started killing, and set us on an evolutionary path that would lead to modern man […] that was a big idea in those days.’ In spite of my original question, Richter declares that ‘my concern is not to tell the story, my job is to have a character who has got an objective, who uses an activity to achieve that objective, and has what we call an adjustment which is how he feels doing that – you don’t want to get sucked into conceptual stuff.’ There must exist a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ upon the consciousness of the audience, Richter advises, ‘and if you don’t have it, the chair becomes very uncomfortable.’

In his memoir, Dan describes the setting of the MGM studios at Elstree as being akin to Alice in Wonderland, or like a ‘great cathedral’, with elfish and pixyish characters working in and around the sets. I ask him why the studios, at first, had such an impression of mysticism about them. He tells me that ‘the MGM studios were built in the ‘30s, they had this classic, beautiful quality; it felt like you were visiting Orson Welles. There were all these people who were so good at so many things all going around – there were nine or eleven stages […] it was big.’ Dan pauses for a second, ‘it was just like being in a dream.’ With the words DAN RICHTER – DAWN OF MAN emblazoned across his new office door, he remembers thinking, ‘suddenly I had all this power […] everyone would be like, whataya think Dan?’ The incredible technical innovation that the production of 2001 provoked also contributed to the atmosphere of otherworldliness in Elstree Studios at the time. Dan mentions special effects supervisors Doug Trumbull and Con Pederson, saying of them, ‘it was just amazing; one of the things about 2001, was we actually invented new ways of doing things and technologies to do it.’ You don’t have to look far to identify such innovations; from front screen projection to centrifuge sets and zero gravity effects, the production behind 2001 really was pioneering.

Like the studio setting, it appears that at some moments Kubrick also impressed an aura of enchantment upon Dan. In his memoir, Richter draws attention to ‘the alchemy of Stanley’s art and process’ and describes the director as a ‘merlin’-like figure who ‘conjured’ this ‘wonderful, majestic film.’ Richter writes that Stanley has a ‘quality of otherness’. I have always been sceptical reading articles about Stanley which designate him, for example, as the ‘recluse’, the ‘phobic’, the ‘paranoid’, or the ‘museum piece’, so I ask Dan to expand on this comment. Dan says that Stanley’s office was a ‘teeny room’ and in it were ‘books, papers, drawings, and photographs piled to the ceiling, it was total chaos’. Despite all of this, Dan remembers seeing Stanley for the first time, a ‘frumpy little guy with a Bronx accent’, who was ‘very relaxed and immediately interested – I hear you know Allen Ginsberg’. Even though, as Richter tells me, ‘Kubrick is always the smartest guy in the room’, and often it feels as though ‘you’re playing checkers and he’s playing three-dimensional chess’, he had a casual manner about him with ‘a great sense of humour’ regularly ‘bumming cigarettes because Christiane [his wife] wouldn’t let him smoke.’ Kubrick surrounded himself with a young team who were willing to break their backs to support his vision: ‘If you could go along with it, it was an amazing ride, you know, on your way to eternity.’ However, Dan says grinning,  ‘a lot of the older technicians had some issues with him, saying, we can’t do that guv, and, well, they wouldn’t be round for long – he didn’t suffer fools easily’, but adds urgently that ‘there were a lot of us in our twenties saying sure, let’s do it, let’s try to figure it out.’ For instance, Dan says, ‘Stanley’s assistant Tony Frewin was only sixteen or seventeen years old – Kubrick was surrounded by young people who wouldn’t question him.’ It is far from the truth  to say that the director was exercising tyranny on set; in his memoir, Richter says that ‘Stanley’s behaviour wasn’t about control’, indeed, it is ‘people who don’t know him [who] portray him as a compulsive control freak’. Rather, Dan stresses that Kubrick would surround himself with people who offered ideas; he was ever-listening. Dan closes his assessment of Kubrick with the words, ‘he was a normal guy, but just happened to be a massive genius.’

After filming wrapped on 2001, Dan had very little to do with Stanley. I recall reading that Malcolm McDowell was a little hurt by this sharp cut-off of communications after the production of A Clockwork Orange was over. Indeed, Dan tells me that ‘you think you’re his best friend when you’re working with him, and then all of a sudden it seems like he doesn’t know you anymore.’ Dan would see Kubrick once more in his life. He looks up above his camera smiling: ‘I had designed and built a three-headed editing table for John and Yoko which I loaned to Stanley while he was shooting A Clockwork Orange in 1971 – I actually spent the day with him’, and in typical Kubrick character, ‘we talked about what kind of paper shredders we were using.’

By Lydia Firth 

In March, I was fortunate enough to catch Katy Hessel for a chat. If you’re not familiar with Hessel she is an art historian, Guardian columnist and curator, known for authoring The Story of Art Without Men and running the Instagram account and podcast The Great Women Artists. The Story of Art Without Men does exactly what it says on the tin: Hessel leads us through the history of art from the 1500s to 2020s exclusively from the perspective of women artists. The book takes its name from E H Gombrich’s canonical text, The Story of Art, which included absolutely no women when first published in 1950, and now, in its 16th edition, compensates for its erasure of female artists by including just one. Hessel’s antidote to this exclusionary tale is an invaluable compendium; an essential contribution to the art history canon.

A Sunday Times and New York Times ‘Bestseller’, a Trustee at Charleston Trust, an alumna of Forbes 30 under 30, I’d go as far as to say she defines the art history zeitgeist. Her dedication to educating others about female artists is demonstrated by her willingness to speak to me, the humble undergraduate, albeit over the phone as she dashes about the streets of London to buy a pancake pan to host some friends (it was Shrove Tuesday, after all). 

In The Story of Art Without Men, Hessel’s zeal for art is clear. I ask her how she first got into art. Growing up in London, she benefited from the various free galleries, visiting on Saturday afternoons with her sister. She recalls the Tate Modern opening when she was six: being in awe of Louise Bourgeois’ spider sculpture, Maman, and the expansive turbine hall, ‘how could you not be entranced by that’ as a child she questions. Going on to study art, the extent of the sidelining of women artists only dawned on her aged 21, when visiting an art fair and realising, out of the thousands of artworks before her, not a single one was by a woman. She asked herself whether she could name twenty women artists, ten pre-1950, any pre-1850. Despite her degree in art history, the answer was no. She tells me, ‘it’s not like these women didn’t exist. They existed, and they were incredible… you’re just actually missing out on having really interesting conversations about really interesting artworks.’ She hopes the book acts as an entry point into art history, the kind of book ‘on the first floor of the bookshop, that sort of made art mainstream’. Having received my copy for Christmas, purchased by my parents from Waterstones first floor (it was their book of the year in 2022), she has managed to do exactly that. 

Without The Story of Art Without Men, both myself and many others wouldn’t be familiar with the dazzling concentric paintings of Hilma Af Klint who produced some of the first major abstract works, before the likes of Kandinsky and Mondrian; the psychologically acute portraits of Alice Neel; the 18th century pioneer Angelica Kauffman. I tell her there are now art enthusiasts who may be more clued up on women artists than men. She says there’s a David Caspar Friedrich show at The Met which she might have to give a chance: we jokingly share a moment of misandry. I lament Durham not offering a degree in art history and Hessel suggests ‘there’s much more hunger’ for the discipline than ‘institutions actually have food for’. As a humanities student who has mourned the crumbling arts and humanities building juxtaposed against sparkly new facades of business schools and STEM buildings, these words resonate. 

I urge you to check out Hessel’s work: her podcast guests have included the likes of Tracey Emin and Marina Abramović. Ali Smith claims ‘her retake on the canon has changed it forever’: Katy Hessel is quite literally at the forefront of the art world, and changing the game with her passionate and palatable positive discrimination.

By Maisie Jennings

‘Emerald Fennell and Sam Mendes are a scourge on British cinema’; this is the polemic expressed by my friend Jack in a Bethnal Green wine bar. We are a few pints and half a bottle of wine deep, and they are lamenting the state of contemporary British filmmaking. I had seen the stills leaked from the set of Fennell’s upcoming film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, in which 34-year-old Australian actress Margot Robbie plays 18-year-old Catherine Earnshaw alongside Jacob Elordi as the brooding Byronic figure of Heathcliff. Fennell’s casting is divisive – central to Emily Brontë’s novel is the violent, metaphysical romance between Cathy and her adopted brother Heathcliff, who is described in the book with ethnically ambiguous terms, referencing his ‘dark’ skin and ‘gipsy’ origins. Arguably, Heathcliff’s non-white racial identity is essential in fuelling the complicated and fraught dynamic between him and Cathy, pulsating with shame, subjugation, and an ineffably spiritual connection. 

I’ll admit, I’m not too optimistic towards Fennell’s adaptation, particularly her handling of the class dimensions in Brontë’s text. Her last film, Saltburn (2023), offered a stylish, yet ultimately substance-less satire of the British aristocracy. What’s made clear, however, is Fennell’s commitment to provocation – mostly through blunt stabs at the erotic, which never really come to climax. Indeed, the promotional images for Wuthering Heights (2026) feature an illustration of one skeleton going down on another. While I’m not necessarily against an added psychosexual emphasis to the source material, the absence of sex in the novel was not merely a result of repressive Victorian morality, it was paramount in establishing the book’s extraordinary sadism – transcending bodies, surpassing death. The explicitly sexual ‘first looks’ at Fennell’s project might also invite audiences to interpret Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship as romantic; let’s be clear, this is not a love story. 

Much of the online discourse surrounding the film also concerns anxiety towards its historical accuracy. Daisy Jones, for British Vogue, defended Fennell’s inaccurate costume design – advocating for ‘fun’ and ‘whimsical’ approaches to period films because fiction is, after all, only fiction. Fennell’s casting director, Karmal Cochrane, offered a similarly shallow response to the backlash, saying that there is no need for accuracy because the original source material is ‘just a book’ and not based on real life. Of course, directors do not owe us an exact historical approximation. The intentional inclusion of anachronism in historical films is not always an inherently bad thing, it just has to be good. Interpretation is variable and cinema’s fecund ground produces endlessly diverse adaptations of original source material, prompted by the creative agency and artistic licence of directors. The criticism towards Fennell’s choices are not intended to dispute this fact, rather, the importance of interpretation rests, as ever, in its appreciation of source material, its generative, constructive element to the plot, and its execution. I’m dubious of Fennell’s commitment to these first two criteria, as for the third, we will have to wait and see. 

A week after my conversation with Jack, we met at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, hidden just off the Mall by St James’ Park. They had invited me to a screening of Jacques Rivette’s Hurlevent (1985), a more stylistically classical, obscure film from the French New Wave director. It was the first time I’d seen a film on 35mm print, and while this made me feel enormously intellectual, it also created an elliptical, dreamlike atmosphere in which passions between Catherine and Roch (Rivette’s Heathcliff) oscillate like the tossing and turning of waking from a nightmare. Rivette loosely transposes the first half of Bronte’s novel onto the austere Cévennes countryside in 1930s France. Interior shots of the dark, stone farmhouse, functioning as a prison for its inhabitants, are contrasted with the barren plains of Southern France – recalling the bleak, untamed landscape of the Yorkshire Moors where Brontë sets her brutal novel. Rivette’s mise-en-scene is sparse and minimal, underscoring the isolation of his protagonists and their entrapment within an unforgiving rural microcosm of wider class stratification. His choice to set the film during the interwar period is also strangely effective; we can tell through the costuming that Hurlevent is set in a more recent past, but it feels so remote and gothic that it becomes impossible to comprehend the setting as modern. Grand sweeping shots of the landscape, accompanied by haunting Bulgarian choral music at epiphanic moments in the film’s narrative also serve as another anachronism that provides a new texture of alienation. 

Most importantly, Hurlevent also demonstrates Rivette’s extremely faithful reading of Brontë’s text. Rivette, in an interview for Senses of Cinema, stated that he was struck by the fact that, at the time, nobody had made a film adaptation featuring actors that were actually the age of the characters in the novel. The youthful theatricality of the teenage actors Rivette casts creates the sense that they are play-acting an adulthood far beyond their years – their squabbling, teasing, and exceptional cruelty towards one another only amplifies the tragedy of their fates. Although some English Literature students may find Roch (Lucas Belvaux) too blonde and boyishly handsome, this is rectified by his return to Hurlevent as a newly affluent businessman, consumed by his desire for vengeance. Rivette’s Roch in the latter part of the film is cold, sadistic, and brutally violent – probably the most terrifying interpretation of Heathcliff that I’ve ever seen. Refreshingly, Hélène (Rivette’s Nelly, played by Sandra Montiagu) is age-adjusted too – she is only in her early twenties and forms the film’s most central, grounding figure. 

Hurlevent is an unbearably emotional film; Rivette renders the dynamics of Brontë’s novel with such emotional intensity and affect that, at some points, it becomes difficult to watch. This is exactly how I feel in my reading of Wuthering Heights, a book so muscularly cruel and abusive that reading it feels nearly devastating. To me, this is at the heart of interpretation. An effective execution of a director’s artistic interpretation of source material and the intentions behind inaccuracies and anachronisms must culminate in constructing a powerful emotional response in the viewer that aligns with, or amplifies, the intention of the author or artist.

A director could stage source material in variously diverse and unexpected ways – think of the playful Beverly Hills setting of Clueless (1995), loosely adapted from Jane Austen’s 1815 novel Emma. It can only work effectively, however, if the viewer is transported to the emotional and thematic landscape painted by the original author. Wuthering Heights might be ‘just a book’, but any good adaptation appreciates the themes and dimensions that are essential to the original text, despite major or minor liberties.