Wuthering Heights: a construção do foco narrativo no cinema

Abstract

The English writer Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights, a very complex book because of the themes dealt with in it and because of its structure. The book contains numerous particularities, among which is a full of nuances narrative process. The objective of this dissertation is analyzing in details this narrative process in Brontë’s book and contrasting it to the one elaborated by Andrea Arnold in the adaptation directed by her in 2011. To analyze the book, the classification by Abbott (2008) was the main theoretical basis and Herman & Vervaeck (2005) was also consulted. To contrast the book and the film, the studies by Abbott (2008), Metz (2007), Hutcheon (2006) and Aumont (2012) constituted the fundamental theoretical basis. The exchange of focalization in the book grants it a complexity that is difficult to replicate in cinema. Therefore, the hypothesis here is that the focalization is transferred to Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (2011) and that the film brings a different perspective than the ones created by Brontë. The results point out to the idea that the narration in Brontë’s book brings the narrator and the reader together, and the hypothesis that the film has the same effect – but even more profoundly – was confirmed. Although the focalization in the 2011 movie is with Heathcliff – and not with Nelly and Mr. Lockwood as in the book – the strategy of granting proximity through the movie’s sole and clear point of view connects to the one the reader experiences by means of the first person narration in the book.