The adored older cousin, Ambrose, who has brought up the orphaned Philip, has departed to Italy for his health. Moments later we are introduced to the adult version of Philip Ashley. A man and boy are seen fleetingly and happily together before the child has grown into a schoolboy. It opens with a vast seascape with precipitous cliffs. The new Rachel begins with a rapid pre-title sequence of images that whet the appetite.
Roger Michell, as director, knows how to make absorbing films from notable novels, as he did with Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1995) and Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love (2004), without recourse to slavish ‘fidelity’. This apart, the new Fox Searchlight production makes very intelligent use of the novel. This is a matter for neither praise nor blame in matters of adaptation, but, in relation to the film’s ending, the old film wins hands down.
Re-viewing this version, it is probably true to say that it adheres somewhat more closely to the novel, particularly in the earliest and final episodes. As one who had not read her for several decades, I was impressed on recently reading My Cousin Rachel (1951) by the sheer quality of the prose and its ability to maintain an enigmatic quality without descent into mere teasing.īack in 1952, 20th Century Fox filmed the novel with Richard Burton as Philip Ashley and Olivia de Havilland as his cousin Rachel. Clearly there was plenty to attract filmmakers to her work.
Does anyone read Daphne du Maurier (1907–89) these days? An immensely popular novelist for some decades, she was much filmed, for screens large and small, most famously by Alfred Hitchcock, who filmed Jamaica Inn and Rebecca in 19 respectively, and, even more famously, The Birds in 1963.
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