Devotion Reviews

Warner Bros. advertised this as the story of the Bronte Sisters; their advertising bore as much resemblance to the truth as a press release from a politician. The script took such liberties that scholars everywhere were furious with the omission of details and commission of errors. If one were not aware of the tragic story of the Brontes and their deaths at early ages, this might have made a pleasant fictional diversion. For the record, the film opens with Whitty donating writing paper to the impoverished Bronte sisters, who cannot afford to buy their own. Whitty is a peeress of the realm in the town of Haworth in Yorkshire, 1836. The sisters, Lupino, de Havilland, and Coleman, and brother Kennedy live with father Montagu Love and aunt Griffies. Kennedy is a drunk but brilliant artist. He earns what little money he needs for alcohol by sketching patrons in various bars. One day he brings home Henreid, the new curate of the village. The sisters naturally assume that Henreid is a fellow boozehound, but the truth is that he helped Kennedy home so the poor young man wouldn't wind up face down in the gutter. The sisters take jobs as governesses to raise enough money to send Kennedy to London, where he hopes to establish himself as an artist. But he is back very quickly and carps about the philistines in London and how they "don't understand" his work. Meanwhile, Lupino and Henreid are establishing a relationship. She takes him to a dismal moor she calls "Wuthering Heights" and regales him with stories of being beckoned by a rider on a large black horse. (A modern analyst might find something vaguely sexual about that.) De Havilland doesn't like Henreid and makes that clear to the man, telling him directly that she wishes he would cease seeing her sister. His answer is a kiss on her lips. Henreid doesn't have a great deal of money but he does buy one of Kennedy's paintings to help send Lupino and de Havilland to Belgium, where they hope to continue their educations. Lupino is now in love with Henreid, but he admits that he doesn't love her in the same way. Once in Brussels, headmaster Francen is very aggressive in his advances (the swine!), and the impressionable de Havilland falls for him. Kennedy becomes ill, and the sisters return home to Yorkshire on the eve of the publication of Wuthering Heights by Lupino and Jayne Eyre by de Havilland. Just prior to his death, Kennedy, who has read both books, tells his sisters that they are in love with the same man (Henreid), a fact revealed by the novels. De Havilland trots off to London to have a good time, and Lupino remains in Yorkshire, becoming increasingly frail. In London, de Havilland meets and enjoys the company of Greenstreet (as William Makepeace Thackeray), who squires her all over town. They become close friends and de Havilland finds a confidante in Greenstreet. At one point, she says she's sorry her sister was never able to be passionate in romance, and Greenstreet wonders if de Havilland ever read Lupino's book, one of the most passionate of all novels published in the era. De Havilland visits Henreid, who has been reassigned to a London slum. He admits that he loves her, but she'll have none of that; they argue and she leaves to return to her home in the North. Lupino dies as she looks out the window, and de Havilland realizes that the man on horseback her sister was waiting for was, in fact, Henreid, but that the fire burned on only one side of the hearth. Henreid joins de Havilland in the small town and the two bid Lupino a fair trip to heaven. It's all a lot of slush, of course, and the thought that Henreid's cleric character was the inspiration for Rochester and Heathcliff was stretching things just a mite too far. If anyone was the romantic image for those men, it may have been the sisters' brother, Branwell, who was just as star-crossed as they were. In the original plans for the film, de Havilland and sister Joan Fontaine were to have played together on the screen, but they were feuding heavily at the time.