I saw this film at the cinema earlier in the year and it was an engrossing deep and captivating film filled with mystery and suspense like all duMurier stories.
The story follows a young man who has his bachelor way of life thrown into disarray when the enchanting and mysterious wife of his recently deceased uncle comes from Italy to live at the estate, leaving him caught between a state of infatuation and being torn believing Rachel may have murdered his uncle.
However this film has been horrendously whittled down for the DVD, missing masses of dialogue and scenes depicting important plot points and parts of the mystery which completely removed me from the story. Let me stipulate this review will have spoilers.
The scenes for example where Phillip goes to Italy were far longer in the cinema version, depicting his deep depression and anger over the loss of his uncle.
Scenes of his avoiding meeting Rachel were massively reduced removing the tension and losing all sense of how stubborn Phillip is (which makes him feel even more a pushover than he actually was). There were scenes completely missing entirely between Louise and Phillip, scenes missing between Rachel and Phillip, everything jumped so fast from Phillip believing Rachel is a murderess to suddenly overnight of meeting her, being in love, it didn’t show the gradual build of the relationship at all.
What bothered me were there were several scenes cut which revealed how deeply Phillip loved Ambrose, there were flashbacks that were removed, and lines of dialogue where Rachel talks of her deceased husband making Ambrose barely feel relevant to either.
The worst part is how the cut has made it hard to connect to or understand the character of Phillip because all the things really relevant to his character are gone and all that’s left is a love sick and obsessed fool.
The cinematic version was well over two hours - I can easily feel at least forty minutes to an hour of content are missing here so now the film is a rush you can’t enjoy.
My opinion is that this DVD is half a film, all of the most mysterious and tense scenes that leave us really questioning who Rachel is have been completely cut and it leaves no sense of anything. Even the ending was cut down by 90% and so terribly rushed - it’s like a build to a mystery the entire film and hardly any conclusion, suddenly “the end”.
This is a period drama - they’re meant to be long and involved, pushing this along at cheetah speed was a huge error, whoever cut this down should be ashamed. It’s so disjointed it’s a sin.
If you saw this in the cinema, don’t even bother, it’s like a trailer in comparison to the full theatrical version that was. The cinematic version was a five, the DVD is barely a three.
They really need to consider putting this film back together the way it was meant to be shown, because this is a poor version of the story that I do NOT recommend buying even at a low price.
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