* The Moviegoer *

An amazingly daring choice of plot in these days of Hays, "Wuthering Heights" is unusually good. Even with Emily Bronte's subtle interweaving of incest here reduced to grim hints that flicker like summer lightning from afar, the film has caught that quality in the story that surpasses time or place. Tragedy, stark as the Yorkshire moors that are its scene, is the theme of "Wuthering Heights"; and not a punch has been pulled in Goldwyn's cinema version of this dank offshoot of nineteenth-century Romanticism. Especially convincing in the early scenes, Merle Oberon and Lawrence Olivier run the full course of Cathy's and Heathcliff's passion. Mr. Olivier is particularly good as the gypsy lover, catching all of that character's mysterious and dangerous attraction. Maturest entertainment to come out of Hollywood in some time, "Wuthering Heights" does not "aim to please"; it is substantial intellectual fare, a straightforward dramatization of a unique and overwhelmingly powerful story.