Wuthering Heights film sparks a Brontë boom in Haworth (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: This week sees the release of a new film adaptation of Wuthering Heights that's been making headlines for its steamy approach to a British classic. This reinvention for the TikTok generation has also been having an effect of the home of the Brontes, the village of Haworth in Yorkshire. Our arts correspondent David Zillito reports.

[00:00:20] Speaker 2: The Yorkshire moors and the path to Top Withens, the inspiration for a literary classic, Wuthering Heights. The sky is every shade of grey you could possibly imagine. The wind is up a bit and it is pouring with rain. It is very bleak. It is also a perfect Bronte day. Welcome to Haworth and they're very excited at the moment. Haworth, the home of Emily Bronte and her famous sisters, is more than just a tourist attraction. It's a cultural shrine and the talk at the moment is all about a new film adaptation.

[00:01:21] Speaker 3: So kiss me and let us both be damned.

[00:01:25] Speaker 2: Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi have turned the passion up to a level. Did you think it would stop me? And it's already drawing in a new crop of Bronte pilgrims to the village.

[00:01:39] Speaker 4: Emily Bronte died in this house thinking Wuthering Heights was a massive flop.

[00:01:44] Speaker 2: One of them, Katie Kennedy, the history gossip. For someone of your generation, what is the appeal of Bronteness?

[00:01:53] Speaker 5: I feel like the grittiness, the yearning. This was written 200 years ago and it was such a controversial book of its time and it still carries that controversy like today.

[00:02:07] Speaker 2: And another who's been seduced by the film is Molly Roberts. A million have watched her reaction to then taking on reading the book.

[00:02:17] Speaker 6: I found the book incredibly difficult to read. I think it must be easier when you're in school and you have like a teacher kind of guiding you and helping you with like the language and the themes and all of that. So I was kind of doing my own research as well trying to understand it more.

[00:02:35] Speaker 1: What should you do Heathcliff, if you were rich?

[00:02:39] Speaker 2: All of which raises the question, what does Howarth make of the film? This is it isn't it? It is. Rebecca York, who runs the Bronte Museum, was invited to the premiere. When you were in that premiere, what were your feelings like watching it?

[00:02:53] Speaker 7: It was just so exciting but emotional as well, seeing Yorkshire and that beautiful landscape and hearing those words.

[00:03:00] Speaker 2: Howarth is bracing itself and it's not as if it's not already a popular destination. I met local historian David Pearson amidst the throng of visitors on the famous steam train that runs up to Howarth.

[00:03:14] Speaker 8: People sometimes say it's like going back 60, 70 years where you get on a train and slowly the old, the modern world leaves you and this world envelops you. What really disappoints us sometimes is when people think it's not real. So people don't think Howarth is a real town? Well, increasingly they go there and, I mean, I live in the village, just at the bottom of Main Street and you get people saying, do people live here, you know, and they think it's some sort of Disneyland.

[00:03:41] Speaker 2: No, Howarth is a real place, not a film set, but this new film version of their local classic is definitely getting people talking. I met Louise at Louby Lou's Ice Creams. Are you prepared though? It's a bit saucy, I think.

[00:03:56] Speaker 3: It's a bit saucy, but the Brontes were also, you know, advanced in their writing at the time. I mean, their novels were like, oh, at the time.

[00:04:08] Speaker 2: But whatever anyone makes of the film, it is a Bronte moment for a proud Yorkshire village. David Solletto, BBC News, Howarth.