It’s a dark and stormy night on the Yorkshire Moors. A man lost in the snow stumbles upon a gloomy old house, "Wuthering Heights". The man is Lockwood (Miles Mander) a new tenant of the Heathcliff family, the owners of the house. Lockwood asks for shelter during the storm and it is very reluctantly given by its taciturn owner, Mr Heathcliff (Laurence Olivier). At the window of his room, Lockwood thinks he sees the ghostly vision of a woman on the moors. When Heathcliff hears of this he goes wild, throwing Lockwood out of the room and calling at the window, “Cathy, is that you? My Cathy, Cathy, Cathy” etc, etc. When Lockwood tells the housekeeper (Flora Robson) of this, she sits him down for a nice long flashback, telling the whole story of Heathcliff and his lost love Cathy Earnshaw.