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Tuesday, May 26, 2020

MY COUSIN RACHEL (1952)

From writer Daphne Du Maurier, more ‘near-beer’ Gothic Romance. This one a period piece, yet not too far off her better-known REBECCA/’40 where an admired beauty proves to be a force of evil. Here, our mysterious beauty is presumed a force of evil, perhaps unfairly. Richard Burton, in youthful trim making an effective Hollywood debut, does the presuming, certain his beloved cousin’s death was caused by a fateful wedding to Rachel. That’s Olivia de Havilland in peak loveliness as cousin-by-marriage Rachel, causing this young man’s libido to rage against wary instinct as she serves cup after cup of an Italian herbal tea elixir. Passion potion, palliative or poison? Nunnally Johnson’s succinct script manages to hold an ambiguous tone without turning idiotic, though some of the foreshadowing is on the clumsy side, while a surfacey Gothic style from director Henry Koster and lenser Joseph LaShelle matches the Du Maurier level of invention just right. Any deeper response and the film wouldn’t work at all. Leave it to composer Franz Waxman, just off his masterful A PLACE IN THE SUN score, and the sole holdover from REBECCA, to reach that deeper response without pulling everything down around him.

DOUBLE-BILL: A 2017 remake (not seen here) with Rachel Weicz, from Brit writer/director Roger Michell, attracted little interest.

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