This film is definitely stilted but that is more due to the source material. It's heavily mired in Romanticism and almost manic depressive tendencies and tone. It's nearly impossible to separate judgment of this film from judgment of the book which I have serious issues with in terms of misleading young women to have ideas of romance that are built around suicide and love or death ideas of romance. That being said, the performance of Laurence Olivier absolutely translates that Gothic notion of Love and Death being in the same boat and that one must only love one person in life and if you cannot have them you must die. It's quite stubborn and dangerous in that sense.
The production is magnificent in a way. The sets are very expansive and dreary. And the lighting and backdrops really create a tonal imposition of sorrow, dread, loss and romantic suffering. The static nature of camerawork has definitely increased. Directors are moving towards realism in the production elements of the film allowing the camera to sit more and cut less focusing your gaze on the grandiosity of wide shots and on the intensity of close ups and mediums. The timing and acting and writing is still over the top though and unrealistic albeit that may have more to do with the nature of the source material being stilted and overly dramatic rather than the style of the day. America has not yet left this film as a form of escapism mentality. This movie is absolutely escapist in a really intensely romantic way. Cinema won’t leave this escapist mindset until after World War 2.