All language subtitles for My.Cousin.Rachel.2017.1080p.BluRay.DD5.1.x264-DON_track5_eng

Welcome to the DVD commentary.

I'm Kevin Loader,
the producer of the film.

I'm Roger Michell,
the director of the film.

We're sitting here in London.

It's the week that the film
is about to open in London

and in the UK, and, indeed, in the US,

and it's very engaging to

watch the film again with you guys, um,

and talk a little bit
about it as we go along.

So, Roger, maybe
we should just start by...

You should just say
when you first read the book

that this film's based upon.

Well, I read the book,
I think it was about three years ago.

I read the book, which was
high on a shelf in my house.

It was a copy of the book
that belonged to my mother,

bizarrely, and it was
an old paperback copy

with a, sort of, funny picture of a woman

in a low-cut dress on the front.

And I thought, "Oh, I'll give this a read.

"It looks like a bit of fun,
it looks like it's a bit of

"50s romantic chick lit,"

and very quickly thought
this isn't chick lit at all.

This is really dark and brooding,
and really interesting,

and would make a great film.

And I knew there was
already a film of the book,

but I'd never seen it.

So, the next thing that happened
was I showed it to you.

That's right and, I mean,
we both were amazed,

really, at the kind of
psychological modernity of it

and just the kind of
engagement to the story.

But one of the problems it has, of course,

is that it has this quite long
preamble before the heroine,

the eponymous heroine,
comes into the film.

It's about 60 pages until Rachel

makes her first appearance,
which is good and bad.

It's exciting 'cause it's a long,
extended drum roll

in preparation for her
glorious first appearance,

but it's bad in terms of movies.

You know, you worry that you need to

crack on and start the story.

So, this sequence that we're watching now

took an awful lot of thought and care

in the writing and the shooting,

and the redrafting of the voiceover

that you're listening to now.

I wanted the voiceover to
be as short as possible,

but I needed certain
key elements of the plot

to be laid out before you,
economically, clearly,

and without being too over-confusing

and overburdening the viewer with,

you know, with a load of info.

So, thank God, the voiceover
is stopping right now,

and, really, the story
is starting right now.

And the decision we made, really,

to have Sam Claflin
playing both Ambrose...

uh, and Philip was, we never
really wavered from that.

We always had that idea, didn't we?

And I think others tried to
talk us out of it at one point.

There was some
resistance to the idea.

I mean, I think it's...
It's not a perfect solution

to a very difficult problem.

And the problem posed by the story,

an interesting problem,

is that he has to look
more or less identical

to his cousin-slash-guardian, Ambrose,

and I couldn't think of
a better way of doing that

than having the same actor
playing both those roles.

If he doesn't look
exactly like his cousin,

then there's a moment early on,

in the first scene with Rachel,

which would just never work.

So, I think...

the casting of him in both roles,

with the slight confusion
that that might entail,

is the lesser of...

The lesser of two evils,

and I think it was
the right choice to make.

Tim Barlow as Seecombe.

Yes.

The recalcitrant, grumpy butler,

always with a dewdrop on his nose,

a real scene stealer,
if there ever was one.

This is the classic scene
in which an actor

meaninglessly moves bales of hay

from one side of the barn to the other.

I don't know why I'm admitting
that that's the case,

but it's true.

It's true, there's absolutely
no reason for that actually,

-except to cover the dialogue.
-There's no logic to it at all.

But, um, do you know what, who cares?

It seems to work absolutely fine,

'cause the actor is so marvelous.

He gives it complete conviction

and we buy it, we totally buy it.

So, this is Holliday Grainger,

who spent a lot of time

learning how to ride for this picture.

Actually, I think
she already knew how to ride.

But, in fact, I realize

she never actually gets on
to a horse in the whole film.

I think she's always
in the carriage, isn't she?

She's already got off a horse

or is about to get on a horse.

But unfortunately, we never
see her riding a horse.

And this is one of the key,
several key letters,

in the film.

This is a film that not only
predates e-mails,

iPhones, and telephones.

It seems to predate the steam locomotive,

so the letters arrive many weeks, months,

or even years after they've been sent,

which gives a wonderful
gearing to the way in which

suspense is kind of
dripped into the story.

Yes, I mean, the book
is not particularly specific

about when it's set, but you
always wanted to choose it,

partly as a result of fashion
and partly as the result

of the pre-railway moment,

somewhere between the world of Jane Austen
and the world of Dickens.

Yes, absolutely.
I mean, all we know from the book

is that it takes three
weeks to get to Italy.

When the book is set, you still
have to get to Italy in a car,

so you don't get to Italy on a train.

So, it must be somewhere around
the 1830s that she set it.

You know, the film is
an essay in ambiguity,

and she's being,

oddly, you know,

ironically, very clear about
the ambiguity of when it's set.

Blinding light of Tuscany

comes in.

And this is actually on a hillside,

not above Florence, as it
seems to be in that shot,

with rather wonderful CGI,

but it's a hillside about
40 minutes outside Arezzo,

little further away.

This was a special day, wasn't it?

I think this was our first...

This was our last week of the shoot.

We all decamped to Tuscany

with as many of our crew
who we could take with us.

And on this day,

I got up and looked at my phone forecast

and saw that it was about to be very sunny

until about three o'clock,
and then it was going to cloud over

and rain like mad.

And so, with a lot of running around,

we managed to squeeze a day's work

into those few hours
between, I don't know,

eight o'clock and three o'clock,

without breaking for a meal.

And it really did work
well, this location.

This location is just
outside of Florence, in fact.

Yes, this is the villa in which...

Boccaccio allegedly...

Right, The Decameron,
one of many villas he stayed in.

It's quite a long poem, after all.

And Rainaldi makes his appearance.

Pierfrancesco Favino,
wonderful Italian actor.

We were very keen to cast an Italian.

We obviously considered
casting non-Italians,

who could do the accent, so to speak,

but there's always something
great about casting...

the real thing, and Pierfrancesco
is really consummate.

Big star in Italy as well.

I mean, of stage as well as screen.

A big star.

And absolutely right for this part,

I mean, the right age, the right heft,

the right mix of ambiguity and...

The right complexity
as to, yeah, exactly.

It's the truth!

And of course, Sam,

who did such a wonderful
job with this role.

Sam, who I think I really saw
properly for the first time

in the film of The Riot Club,

that's a film of a play called Posh,

which was done first at the Royal Court.

I watched The Riot Club
'cause it had a whole raft

of promising young
British film actors in it,

and I thought Sam absolutely stood out

as a marvelous talent,

then watched him in The Hunger Games.

And then, last year, he had a huge success

in a film called Me Before You.

But even before that film had come out,

in this location, for example,

in the middle of the countryside,
20 miles from Arezzo,

by the lunchtime of shooting here,

there was a little gaggle
of Sam Claflin fans

who'd gathered at the bottom of the drive.

Somehow, the bush telegraph had announced,

or social media had announced that Claflin

was in the environs.

And these people had
driven hundreds of miles

to catch a glimpse of him.

As always, he was inordinately gracious

and generous with his time.

I remember they followed us around

at dinner that evening in Arezzo,
didn't they, after...

we'd done our reception with the mayor
and local dignitaries?

Oh, that was
absolutely wonderful, wasn't it?

Yes, we were very
privileged by that piece of, uh...

Here we are.

Here's the shot of the film
that actually does take part in Arezzo.

Uh, we flew in the morning, and we...

shot that in the afternoon.

This is Florence, of course.

Uh, exactly a year ago, on my birthday,

or the day after my birthday.

It's my birthday today, by the way,

which is why I'm so
much enjoying coming in

and doing this commentary.

Should only ever
be done on your birthday.

Yeah, from noW on,

that's all I'm going to do on
my birthday, is commentaries.

This was in the palazzo...

Oh, which palazzo is it, Kev?

It's not Gandia, it's the other one.

No, it's not Gandia, in Florence itself.

I spent quite a lot of time,
in my youth, living in Florence

and never got into buildings like this,

which are still privately owned.

I think they were the most
expensive locations of the shoot.

Well, they were worth
every penny, look at them.

But the decor in this room

full of sculpture wasn't there.

That's the work of the art department,

and more particularly,
the brilliant Alice Normington,

who art directed and production designed
this film.

So, here's the thing.

I wanted this field to
be waist-high in corn,

ripening wheat.

But of course, the seasons don't allow you

to get the crop that you
want when you're filming,

and I was faced with two alternatives.

One was to encourage the farmer,

um, he was called Wilf,
to leave that little patch of land

without touching it for
as long as possible,

and the other would be
to introduce, sort of,

the combination of prop wheat
and CGI wheat.

The latter prospect
filled me with such horror

that I think we kind of got away with...

I think the vista behind the...

- Yeah, exactly, you get away...
- The scything takes away...

The scything is...

Scything is secondary to the view, really.

It's a homecoming
for that character, isn't it?

It's almost plausible that
those men would be scything that field.

This is another location
altogether near Oxford,

in another house chosen for its beautiful,

um, sort of enlightenment symmetry.

I wanted the idea that
this house felt modern

and full of illumination,
both rational and otherwise,

compared to Philip's

muddy, dusty, dog shit-strewn,

more Medieval interior.

And here's the marvelous Iain Glen.

Game of Thrones Iain Glen.

Game of Thrones lain Glen,
who's made such a great job

of bringing this character to life,

and giving the character
real humanity and interest,

and sympathy.

He was like a father.

And here's yet
another location, this one...

Stocker's.

Yeah, Which is near...

Near... Not far from Amersham.

- It's near Rickmansworth...
- Rickmansworth, that's right.

-Which is in...
-Northwest London.

The home county's about
half an hour out of London.

So, we assembled this film,

as is now becoming clear,

from a, sort of, mosaic of
many, many different locations.

This, for example, is in South Devon,

as it borders Cornwall.

I made a choice not to try
and either shoot this film...

in Cornwall, or even actually
to set the film in Cornwall,

not because I have any
objection to Cornwall,

but I didn't want it to cross over into

a kind of Poldark world.

We've recently, in the
UK, had a very successful

TV show set in Cornwall called Poldark.

I thought that would maybe
be confusing or unhelpful.

So, this is set in a, sort
of, vague West Country,

Dorset-y, Wessex-y, sort of, um,

Hardy-esque world, I guess.

And this house, in fact,

which is a very ancient house,
but was actually

in the Surrey Hills, wasn't it,

and had recently been inherited by

a historian and former
television personality in the UK,

Bamber Gascoigne,

who inherited it from
his 99-year-old great aunt,

and then realized that although it's of
considerable architectural interest,

it is as dilapidated
as this scene gives the impression.

And he had the choice of

try to work out how to
rescue the house by spending

several millions of pounds on it

to restore it to its former glory,

and in fact, has set
it up as a charity now,

and they've built an opera
house in the back garden,

the Opera in the Woods,

which opens, I think, this week.

Part of the challenge
of making a film like this

is this, sort of, series of makeovers

that the house goes through.

It's a challenge, really, for scheduling,

but it's a challenge also
for production design.

I wanted, oddly, the house

to go from darkness into light

as the story went in the other direction,

and I think that what Alice
and her team did was remarkable.

We also were very lucky with this house

because, traditionally, when you get these
historical properties in England,

they're rather curated
and you're surrounded by people

in brown coats and white gloves

whenever you want to move
a piece of furniture.

And here, we were very
lucky that we were allowed

to paint walls and change
things quite a lot,

but, you know, provided that
the historical authorities

approved our choice of
plasterwork and paint,

materials, et cetera.

So, Alice and the art
department really did have

the chance to not only have the genuine

dilapidation at the beginning
of the story,

but to show the makeover
that Roger's just spoken about

as it went on.

It was pretty remarkable
to find this place.

It's about 20 minutes by train
from Waterloo Station.

And, Kev, I think you found
it very early on on a website,

or you read an article about it, perhaps.

I read an article in
the Daily Telegraph about it

and you were rehearsing a play,
so you couldn't come down.

And I remember speaking to you
on the phone and saying,

"I'll eat my hat if we don't shoot
quite a lot of this film here."

And needless to say, we spent months

seeing every other house in England

before circling back and finally

settling on what had seemed

almost inevitable from the
very beginning of the process.

But I mean, you know, it had this library.

I mean, it's extraordinary,

and all we had to do was,
really, rearrange some books...

in here, and a bit of shutter work.

Yeah, I think,
maybe, Alice would probably...

- She'll probably disagree.
- Have a few words to say about that.

But wasn't there something interesting
about after we'd finished filming,

these books were all sent to New College,
Oxford, or somewhere...

Trinity, I believe.

Yes, a lot of them have been given to
one of the Oxford College libraries.

And then,
in lots of the books were found

sort of strange notes from Lord Byron,

or marginalia from Shelley,

all kinds of priceless literary relics.

It was an extraordinary collection.

In fact, when Bamber Gascoigne
inherited the house,

one of his first fundraising activities

was to have an auction of the contents
of his great aunt's estate,

and that raised several million pounds
at Christie's, I believe.

What was she like, for God's sake?

So, this is the, sort of, magnificent

rusting silver service

that Seecombe has evidently
dug out of the cellars

to impress the mistress of
the house who's just arrived.

She, however, has decided to

have a cheese sandwich up
the stairs in her bedroom.

It's marvelous, the way that

Tim and Bobby, the actor playing John,

the other servant there,
just get this whole notion

of starting to act up a bit now
there's a woman in the house

in a way that they wouldn't
have dreamt of prior.

You feel they've already been
nobled, haven't they?

They've been seduced by her,
they're on her side,

like the dogs have roughed upstairs

to see this new captivating presence.

First time a woman has been in this house

since Great Aunt Phoebe, I assume.

And all the bluster has now left Philip,

and he's frightened.

He's nervous.

He's nervous. He's...

unsure of...

He's going to have to creep up those steps

any minute, and knock on the door.

Yeah, have a slug of wine.

And here's this
great roaring chandelier,

which the sound team have...

picked up and run with in a wonderful way.

And we're now going into
scene 67, I think it was.

lt Was.

Uh, Which was something
we shot pretty early on,

the long, difficult, complicated,

but rather wonderful scene,

where he meets her for the first time.

I mean, the only thing
that is tricky is that

when you read the book,

you really don't know
what she's going to be like.

When you read the book,
he has little fantasies about her

being very fat, being very ugly,

being kind of very legalistic,

being unable to speak
English, being very Italian,

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,

whereas we all know that he's
going to open that door and...

Rachel Weisz...

Is going to be in there.

So, we lost a trick in that respect,

but we were so lucky

to cast Rachel that, you know...

We always wanted
Rachel to play the part.

And as she has said,
it's very easy for her.

She doesn't have to remember
her character's name on set.

I'm surprised you knew how to do this.

This was one of the scenes
that we used, actually,

when we were meeting actors, wasn't it?

We did, we got Sam to
do this scene as a screen test, didn't we?

Yeah.

Which he did with huge aplomb,

and charm, and skill.

It's obviously shot during
the day, this scene,

shot over three days.

The nightmare of dogs, absolute nightmare

of having dogs, so-called trained dogs,

wandering around,
shitting all over the place,

barking, whining, demanding meal breaks,

demanding fag breaks.

My God, those dogs were a test
of anybody's patience.

But you can imagine that
in quite a lot of this coverage,

there were no dogs in the room,

just the sound of dogs,
the sensation of dogs.

Panting of dogs.

And then she fell in love again
at first sight

with another curate.

She makes this
rather delightful joke here,

which feels almost
shockingly inappropriate.

Supposedly, a penis joke
in the middle of a film set in 1830,

and that's kind of one of the
appeals to me of this book,

is that she feels like
almost an anachronism.

She feels like a character
from another age,

a character of modern sensibility,

who's been sort of parachuted
into the world of Jane Austen.

She's a character who isn't afraid
of talking about sex,

and isn't afraid of
expressing herself sexually,

and isn't ashamed of
being interested in sex.

She's a character who...

um, will not be owned

in a world dominated by men and ownership.

And it's hard to get rid of the idea

that in an age, i.e. 1950,
when the book was being written,

in an age before, I imagine,
the word feminism,

or feminist, was current, let alone,

perhaps, had never even been coined,

that Daphne du Maurier,
for reasons of her own,

for reasons that are complex,
was very interested in,

beguiled by this very
strong independent woman,

who knew her way around
the world and was fearless.

I think that's one of the,
kind of, structures of the book

and of the film,
which make it more than, simply,

a kind of did she do
it or didn't she do it.

Here, you get this wonderful sense of...

everybody being fascinated by this woman.

For the first time,

in the history of this estate,

there's this gorgeous-looking woman
on a gorgeous big horse.

Kevin, this is one of your shots,
isn't it?

This is one of my drone shots, yes.

I spent a very happy four or five days
with a very accomplished drone unit

when we were on the Flete Estate
in South Devon.

So, Roger would be off
doing proper work with the actors,

and I would be mucking about
with drones and cameras,

and doubles, occasionally,

doing riding shots and cliff shots, and...

You got some
really beautiful material,

quite a lot of which has
ended up in the film.

So, we've used little judicious
bits of CGI, haven't we,

like those ships were put in later.

And we did view
replacements, obviously,

from the main house,

for Penhale because, as Roger said,
it's only 20 minutes from London, really.

So, you will see out of the window
that, on occasion,

there's a bit of CGI view replacement.

But this is real, there's nothing, uh...

Everything's real about it
except those aren't the actual actors.

Yeah, but, uh,
there's no CGI in there.

NoW, here's another location,
which is, again,

hundreds of miles away
near Lewes in Sussex.

We found it very
difficult to find a church

which filled all the requirements.

I wanted a church
which was clearly pre-Victorian,

which meant, for the most part,

a church without stained glass windows.

And this church has real charm
and real presence.

It also has no electricity.

And has no electricity.

I know, it really
is in the middle of nowhere.

It's at the end of a country lane

that really ends at the farm
just beyond this church.

Wonderful place.

Here, we start to
meet some of the supporting cast

who are so important to the film.

Andrew Havill, who plays
the Reverend Pascoe.

Who we've Worked With before
in Hyde Park on Hudson.

Vicki Pepperdine,
who's playing his wife.

Playing Mrs. Pascoe.

And the musical Schubert girls.

Yes, Polly and Katherine.

Polly and Katherine
singing this really quite

beautiful little piece of German doggerel.

Which they reproduced very charmingly

at the cast and crew
screening a month or two ago.

There was, of course,
more of these people,

there was more material
with these people, um...

in the script and we shot.

But it just was too baggy.

And they are so vivid and
so wonderful, in fact,

a little goes a long way.

They look so similar as well, don't they?

Those wonderful, wonderful
corkscrew wigs, and those...

Not wigs at all, corkscrew hairdos.

And those brilliant costumes by Dinah.

Dinah really enjoyed herself
with all the costumes,

but I think particularly
with the Pascoe girls.

It's giving them a sort of rather
fusty provincialism.

And a costume
from an earlier period.

- Yeah.
- The 1810s.

So, this was the first proper scene
that we did with Rachel

on the second day of our shoot,

and I was talking
to her about it yesterday.

We were talking about
how the complexity of...

lighting these...

candles, in what is quite a long
and difficult dialogue scene,

in fact, is kind of liberating.

It kind of makes the acting easier.

It takes some weight
off the dialogue, I guess.

And I find it terribly satisfying,

the way she plays the
scene with all this action,

and appears to...

thereby throw away the dialogue.

By throw away, I mean she's so natural

in the way that she talks to him
and he talks to her.

And of course, that's an
important element in the scene.

Not only is she literally
lighting up the room,

but we see them, for the first time,

talking to each other
as friends and as intimates,

casually,

simply, until it all goes wrong.

It goes wrong in a second.

It was incredible
that they could do that

on day two of the shoot.

lt Was, yes.

That lift your feet moment,

it felt like they'd known
each other for years.

Well, widows remarry
as fast as they can,

and if they can't do that, they just...

Then the little
turn in the scene now,

which Rachel plays so beautifully.

Well,

I think I would prefer
to give Italian lessons.

And the first of Rachel's hasty exits,

or shooing him out the room.

And there's often, in the end of a scene,

where poor old Philip
is just left wondering

what happened there.

But she plays these moments
with such conviction

that you can't, for a moment,

count on the possibility
that she's anything

but totally innocent,
and that's such a great trick

for the story.

Double it.

If we're going to do this,
we have to do it properly,

how Ambrose would have done it.

As you wish.

Write the letter.

Now?

Ah, were we expecting...

Again, these scenes with...

Holliday.

Holliday, and with Iain as well,

you know, you do feel that they've known
Philip their whole lives, these two.

Yesterday,

you seemed all down in the dumps.

I'm amazed you noticed.

We all did.

Horses, I never
worked quite so exhaustively

with horses as I had on this film.

We had a very, very obliging
horse wrangler, didn't we?

We had a number of very good horsemen

and horsewomen who...

never said, "Oh, no,
we can't do that, mate."

Or, you know,
"Oh, couldn't possibly do that."

Everything, they would
endeavor to have a go at,

and that was a huge support

'cause horses ain't easy.

Now, Rachel, of course,
had to learn to ride sidesaddle,

which is not really a modern skill.

And even in the world of dressage,

I'm not sure the sidesaddle
has survived, has it?

Tisane. It's Italian.

Tea infusions made from these herbs here.

So, this is where the
whole tisane plot kicks off,

or is introduced, this possibility...

that he's slowly being poisoned

by this charming...

herbalist.

She drinks as well, of course,
at this point, at least.

Out and about.

You made him write this!

What?

What do you...

I did nothing of the sort.

If you had set out to humiliate me,
Philip, you really couldn't...

I took the view With Rachel,
in her performance,

that we should believe every moment of it,

as though it was completely convincing,

that we should never, for a second,

suspect that her tears or her anger,

or her...

Don't you understand? It was just...

...expressions of sadness,

or that any of them were calculated
or designed to...

manipulate this

rather gauche and naive young man,

although they clearly do
have enormous effect on him.

I think if you watch
and then re-watch the film,

there won't be a moment where you think

she's just doing that to wind him up,

or she's just doing that
'cause she wants his money,

or she's just doing that
to get his sympathy.

I think it's really,
really well performed.

So, that little dew drop,

which I wrote into the script,

is just a little bead of Vaseline,

but it's enormously effective, isn't it?

It's Wonderful.

Tim was wonderful in this.

He's profoundly deaf.

He's been very deaf since he was
in the army, in the '50s,

and you'd never really know.

He's an amazing actor, still
does one-man performances,

and leads a very full working life.

But he brought a wonderful,
wonderful flavor to this film.

This, again,
was quite an early scene,

and I remember, Kev,
perhaps you remember too

that there was some disquiet when...

the studio saw these dailies,
that it was so dark.

I think, maybe, that was
partly a technical issue.

But it's also a slightly
high-risk endeavor

to shoot this scene,

almost entirely lighting it
with one practical candle.

I mean, there is a little bit
of extra fill,

which is coming from above,
where Rachel is in bed,

but generally speaking,

it's a one-candlelight scene.

And I think Mike Eley,
who, throughout the film,

was utterly inspired and...

uh, full of risk has done such a good job

in pushing this idea
and taking it to its nth degree.

I mean, 20 years ago, you
would have had to support

a scene like this with
loads of ambient light,

but with modern digital IRE cameras,

you really can achieve the
most beautiful effects.

Mike did a lot of tests, didn't he,

of different versions of the IRE
digital camera, and candlelight.

We were going to use the 65-mil,

until we realized that
the post requirements

were in excess of our...

Data storage.

Budget, really.

Yeah, it's just so wonderful here.

I don't know anything about you.

All I know is that I like it
now you're here.

And I don't want you to go.

Is that complicated?

Very.

If you want to go, then go.

It'll cause a little talk, but...

No, but it would cause
a lot more talk if I stay.

'Course, focus pulling
in this kind of light is really hard.

I think it was a huge challenge,
wasn't it, for them?

Yeah.

- And the first assistant camera.
- Very, very difficult thing to do.

I don't know, of course.

Yeah, and very hard for your eye
not to be drawn to the candle

and not the actor beyond sometimes.

Please, for a little while.

I'll stay.

And Dinah's costumes always had these

rather wonderful focus
points that weren't quite...

where you wanted the focus to be.

I think Mike and his team,

the cinematography in this film
is just exquisite.

I think it's one of the real, certainly,

the real highlights of the films I've seen
in the past few months.

Bend down.

So, here comes the first kiss
for the poor little sap.

Now, he goes off thinking, "My God!"

And look at that,
that's the one little glimpse

we get of Rachel on her own in this film.

It's the one little moment
where we share...

a space with Rachel not
being witnessed by Philip.

It's still not clear what she's thinking,
but it sure is interesting.

-She's ready.
-Yes, I can see.

Anything more for the mail?

Yes.

Now, look, here's an odd mistake,

for those of you who are
interested in mistakes.

This letter, which he's about
to, rather guiltily, peruse

is addressed to someone
who lives in Italy,

whereas, of course, any fool
knows that Italy didn't exist

until quite late in the 19th century.

Um, but we thought, do you know what?

Not many people know that.

Not many people do know that.

And it's important
that the audience know

that Rainaldi is Rainaldi.

This is a tisane
made with fennel and rose hips.

And I suppose it would have just
been Toscana, would it?

It would have been Toscana,
I guess so, that province of Tuscany.

Yes, I guess that's right.

They'll call for you
in the middle of the night.

Back at the Flete Estate.

- There's a tisane for that too.
- See?

This is a rather wonderful, um,

collection of inlets and coves
in South Devon,

as Roger said, which is privately-owned,

although the Southwest coastal path

that goes around a lot
of the English coastline,

and goes along the edge of it.

But it's a very, very
quick-flooding estuary,

as you can see here.

And so, at high tide,
where they're having their picnic,

would be underwater.

You can probably
tell that the tide

was not on our side as we shot this scene.

The tide came racing up,

and by the time we came
round onto Sam's closeup,

the tide was...
the waters were Canute-like,

lapping at the ankles of
the Sparks holding lamps,

which we suddenly had to deploy
'cause the light also disappeared.

This scene, in the book,
is set in the household,

'cause as you can see,
at the end of this scene,

it ends up with the letter being burnt.

And I thought we gotta
get out of the house,

but how do I engineer this letter...

being thrown upon a fire
at the end of the scene,

so contrived for this,
sort of, impromptu...

picnic on an autumn's day.

That's the other thing
about filmmaking, isn't it,

is trying to go through the seasons

when you're generally
shooting in that, sort of,

10-week consecutive period.

And we tried to do that here
by starting very late in March

and getting a bit of winter
before we went into the spring,

and then, into fuller spring,
which, obviously,

was very close to summer.

And then, summer can be made to be autumn
by coloring leaves in CGI,

but it's very hard to...

get bare trees if you
haven't shot them in camera.

You're not the woman I hated.

If you don't want them, Philip,

do you think we might let the people
who live on the estate...

And here's autumn rain,

partly for the mood of the scene,

which, obviously,
is something we introduced...

later in the process.

This reminds me of a scene in The Mother,
another film that we made, Kev,

where she opens,

and reopens the suitcase of her...

dead husband to find...

a pair of shoes,

on top of a pile of his clothes,

which I found very affecting
in that film and then

thought I'd repeat in this film.

Well, as she says in the scene,
it's like opening his coffin.

These birds Were contentious.

I think there was a concern
that it would be

seen as a kind of vain homage
to Hitchcock's film,

The Birds, based upon another
Daphne du Maurier story,

but it's not that at all.

It's really to dramatize
what's happening in the foreground.

I think it works very well.

It's all right. Don't cry.

Don't cry. It's all right.

And I think there
are more crows than seagulls.

So, this Was a pre-shoot day.

This was a kind of
stolen day on the Friday

before we started shooting on the Monday,

and this is the very first
sequence that we shot

of the entire film.

And you can see, it is as Kev says,

it's just the end of winter,

and we just got away with the trees
before they burst into leaf.

So, I think there's been some success

in our strategy to...

try and tell the story over
a, kind of, calendar year.

There was more swearing in the script
than remains in the film,

but we were commanded by our betters

to reduce the swearing
to a single expletive.

To maximize
our audience, obviously.

And I put quite a lot
of swearing into the script

because, of course,
people did swear in those days.

People swore in the days of Jane Austen,

but it's just that because
Jane Austen didn't write

lots of swearing into her novels,

people seem to think that

not only did people not
have sex in the 1820s,

they didn't swear either.

25 years.

This is Simon Russell Beale,

one of the most celebrated
of British theater actors.

The godparent to my eldest child,

and a remarkable presence in this film.

He only did a day,

but it's amazing what a difference
a day can make

with an actor of his stature and caliber.

And this was, where was this, Kev?

This location was somewhere else,
again, wasn't it?

This was out in the
Chiltons somewhere, wasn't it?

Somewhere between Oxford and London.

That beautiful necklace

that Dinah had specially
commissioned for the film.

Very good, sir.

And this is where
it all starts to kick off.

Actually, this was a particularly
different, difficult...

focal challenge, wasn't it?

Yeah.

We had to go back
and shoot this three times,

this shot, it was so important to the film
to get this absolutely...

Just as he gets up, the focus shifts.

She looks absolutely stunning.

And the hand to the throat thing,

that came up on one of
the re-takes, didn't it?

Yeah, it came up
'cause I drove home

after shooting this scene the first time,

and I got home
and kicked myself 'cause I...

thought that was terribly
important that she should...

-indicate this amazing...
-Touch the necklace.

Glistening glorious pearls.

We had a device whereby
we could raise or lower

the candelabra in the background...

to our advantage.

It's corny, this shot,
but my God, it really works.

It has such emotional weight by now.

You're kind of longing for them to kiss,

even though you know
it's such a wrong thing to do.

And I think the score here
is particularly wonderful

in expressing the wrongness of the act,

as well as its glory and its excitement,

and its passion.

There's our Christmas tree.

It's so beautiful.

So, there's another tree,

and we're back in Rickmansworth.

And I really wanted them to eat

and rip meat off bones.

So often, in films, you see
people kind of demurely,

sort of, snacking on a carrot
in these situations,

and it felt to me like it
really should feel like...

the best night of these people's lives,

if you work on these difficult estates,

leading difficult impoverished lives.

On this night, you can
drink and eat your fill.

And I think I wrote in the script
something about it being,

this part of the scene being, sort of,

Earth feet, loam feet, which is a sort of,

I think a quotation from T.S. Eliot.

And the song that we commissioned,

I wanted to be dark and not playful.

And our musical director,

who's actually the son, I think, of...

- Son of Ewan MacColl.
- ...Ewan MacColl.

Neill MacColl.

Neill MacColl did a marvelous job,

not only in helping select
that old English folk tune,

but in singing it.

And in tutoring these fiddlers as well.

And in tutoring these fiddlers
in another great English tune.

Bye, Belinda and Mary, bye!

Good luck tomorrow, thank you.

You can see the house has had
a bit of a Rachel makeover now.

It's starting to change.

It's lighter, it's much sparer,

it's less cluttered.

This is another scene
I wanted to try and hold...

in one shot for as long as possible,

just to maintain the sense of its flow

and to make the acting free and natural,

to see this poor boy
desperately trying to...

avoid the knowledge...

that his...

The object of his...

love and affection and obsession
is compromised.

...won't account for an overdraft
of this magnitude.

There's all this. The fabrics...

He also knows he's been winging it
with this necklace,

he's going to get called on that
any minute, I'm sure.

Yeah, the necklace issue
is just around the corner.

- Increase?
- Yes.

Cover the overdraft.

The otherness
of what goes on abroad,

you know, Italy and the whiff of scandal,

and the sending money out of the country,

and these rumors of what
her previous life was.

Yeah, the reek of sex, basically,

and her appetite,
as he is about to discuss.

Appetite, in his mouth,
becomes an obscenity.

Do you understand?

And at that point,
the dancers applaud...

as the dance ends.

And it's a wonderful counterpoint

to this flash of understanding
from Philip,

which is then pushed away, repelled.

You had no right to take that necklace.

It's mine, it's from the estate.

The estate is not yet yours,
as you well know.

And these two men
who've been friends for so long,

all of Philip's life, are now...

almost about to come to blows.

It's a terrible moment, isn't it?

And it starts the chain of events
in their relationship

that leads to the will
that Philip then enforces

his guardian to enact
just before his birthday,

witness just before his birthday.

It was quite right that
you ask for their return.

-No.
-Please.

Holliday's marvelous in this scene.

It was a great honor to wear them
on such a special evening, thank you.

I want you to wear them every night.

Do you need wrapping for them?

She says nothing,
but she's absolutely marvelous.

-You'll regret this.
-Be quiet.

You're a fool.

Thank you for a delightful
and successful evening, Philip.

And Rachel too,

trying to normalize, trying
to make friends with everyone,

trying to calm everybody down.

And you too, merry, merry Christmas.

-Happy Christmas.
-Happy Christmas, Louise.

Holliday just says, "Goodnight, Philip."

-Happy Christmas, Philip.
-Good night.

"Happy Christmas. "

Thank you again.

It's terribly touching.

You see all her longing for him.

He's unreachable now.

In all of his
stubborn unreachableness.

And petulant as well.

I think there was a line, once, wasn't it,

where she said to him,
"Don't be such a child,"

or something, at this point.

And he said,
"Everything's spoiled now," or something.

Everything's ruined.
My mother wore those pearls...

I love the Way her earrings

capture the light as she
leans in that doorway.

And her mother before her.

That's why I was so proud
and happy to wear them.

Had I been married here and not in Italy,

I should have worn them, too.

But he realizes what a terrible, terrible

self-deluding error he's made

in thinking that she might ever, ever...

take him as a replacement for Ambrose.

I mean, that whole film
is predicated on something

pretty wrong, isn't it?

The idea that he's going to...

marry and have sex with
his mother-in-law, basically,

- or his stepmother.
- Yeah.

I mean, it touches
on all those wonderful taboos,

all those kind of toxic wrongs

that make things so interesting
in this kind of story.

I lost a child.

Well, and her attraction to him
is based on his physical resemblance

- to her dead husband as well.
- That's right,

and there's something
in the wrongness of this situation

that the both of them gives it an extra,
sort of, erotic charge.

It's truly transgressive.

Again, this was the pre-shoot day.

This was the first scene
they shot together.

The very first scene
that they shot together.

One day, I woke up and I found myself...

This scene was in
a completely different place

in an early cut, and in the script.

And wanted to hurt me.

It just goes to show you think
you've written the script,

which is inevitable and linear,

and cannot possibly brook any shuffling,

and you're always proved wrong,
aren't you, Kev?

There's always a way of re-engineering

the order of things

to the betterment of story and emotion.

There's always a scene
that you fight and fight

to keep during the difficulties
of the production process,

and then cut on
the second week of the edit,

when you realize
it's completely unnecessary.

That's always a terrible demeaning shock,

when you see that all that work
was pointless,

and that why on Earth
didn't you see that before?

But it's something you
can never prepare for

because the scenes that people
are persuading you to cut

are nearly always the ones
that stay in the film,

and the scenes that no one
would ever think of cutting

are the ones that, the minute
you see a rough assembly,

are the first ones to go.

But I like things being short as well,
as you know.

I like to pull stuff out
and throw it away.

I find it a huge relief.

I have no sentimental attachments

to the hardships of how we shot the scene.

And indeed, there's a scene
early on in the film

in which my four-year-old
daughter appeared,

and that was one of the first to go, so,

savage, brutal, slash and burn.

And that's just your parenting skills.

That's true.

I remember cutting Rosie
out of Notting Hill on the same basis.

She's never forgiven me.

She's grown up to be deeply
bitter and twisted about it.

Ah, a foreign car has arrived.

It's a Ferrari!

Oh, Philip.

So, you probably haven't noticed, viewer,

but over the last four or five scenes,
we've had to move,

for various plot reasons,

we've had to move from Christmas to spring

without a lot of, you know,
narrative, hoo-ha about it.

And I must say I think
it's quite effective.

In this scene,
she's taken over the kitchen.

In this scene, they're not eating

vast slabs of undercooked beef.

They're eating flowers,
they're eating Italian pasta,

they're eating delicate, lovely things
off white china bowls.

None of the food in this film
is at all accurate

to the period in which it's set.

It's a different story,
but it's an important story of its own.

I came to wish you goodnight.

I wish you the same.

Rachel did very well
with her Italian as well.

He's a very old friend.

Very Well.

Of course.

Well?

Who exactly is Benito Castelluccio,

and why did he bring you flowers?

The notion that her life in Italy

was just this round of decadent parties
and balls and...

Suspicious liaisons with strange men.

Suspicious liaisons
with cigar-smoking fatsos.

Yeah, I'm sure
she had a marvelous time.

And from what I remember in the book,

her mother is a total slapper,

but I didn't have room
for that in the film.

So, where was this?

This was?

- This is a manor house, isn't it?
- A manor house, yes.

Somewhere in the foothills
of the Chiltons.

Quite determined?

There is another thing, Mr. Couch,
if you don't mind.

And Simon doing his best legalistic acting

in the strong room,
where all the necklaces and jewels

of the Ashley collection are kept.

All of them, Master Ashley?

All of them, Mr. Couch.

In the book, I think this is divided

between two different lawyers,
which I conflated into one.

I think Iain is
really marvelous in this scene,

you know, when he gets
to the end and has to...

actually endorse and witness
what Philip's proposing,

with such a heavy heart,

and you really sense the regret.

But With such forbearance
and generosity of spirit.

Yeah.

It's a Wonderful performance.

It's proper nobility.

I love the way
the light dies in this shot.

I'm willing to take that risk.

And if she marries for a third time?

That's unlikely.

I don't suppose you've thought
of asking her yourself?

Why, have you?

I'm sure he has considered
marrying her himself.

I'm sure he's considered it quite often,

which is why that rebuke stings so much.

Well, and we had
more of those lunch scenes

where he and she were,

you know, being very
interested in one another.

Well, he was certainly paying
her quite a lot of attention.

-Just here.
-Mm-hmm.

This Was the last copy of the...

document that we had.

Luckily, Sam nailed his
signing on the first take.

I also seem to remember I had to come up

with some ridiculously appropriate

legalistic authentic text
to give the art department

to transcribe, and of course,
you can't read it at all.

I can read it.

Another wasted three hours, Roger.

It's an outstanding piece of work.

You'll freeze frame the DVD
and have another good read one day.

Here's the sadness between them, isn't it?

They both feel a terrible
sense of rupture.

Guardianship which ends tomorrow.

Tonight, in fact,

at midnight.

Then Happy Birthday, Philip.

Well, the great thing
about Dinah's costumes,

which I'm reminded of,
looking at Sam here,

is that they really are clothes,
aren't they?

They're clothes they wear.
They're not...

Yeah, that's always...

Properly broken down and...

The rule of thumb is
could it be clothes, not costumes?

That's totally her approach.

It should be approached in the way
you might approach a modern film.

But often, in modern films,

people seem to have just
bought their clothes

from the shop that day.

That's absolutely true.

So, here's a difficult little scene,

which, um, took a lot of brain power,

effort, time,

especially money,

and works really well,

but a huge amount of effort went into...

Perhaps you want to talk
a bit about that, Kev.

Yes, I mean,
well, what you wrote, Roger,

was that the horse's back legs start,
you know, the cliff starts to crumble

and the horse stumbles, which, of course,
horses are pretty good at not stumbling.

So, to get the right movement
of the horse's legs,

we had to find a way of shooting a horse
and a rider coming off a horse,

where the back legs stumble.

And the way we came to do that
was to build a pit

with a kind of trap door
that could be triggered to fall in

as the horse came over it.

So, that was shot on top
of a hill near Dorking.

Almost a series of trap doors,
like a piano keyboard, wasn't it?

It was, yeah,

so that the horse went down
into a little 18-inch dip.

And then that image,
with the drone shot of the horse,

coming over the horse, was put onto...

the cliff, and the sheep
were then CGI'd on as well.

We had Andy Knott, who's the shepherd,
running across the hill in Dorking,

but the sheep weren't there
with us at that point.

So, here's that bell again,

the bell that she,
that Rachel commented on

in the initial scene

where they met in her boudoir.

And this next little shot
is another trick, if you like,

'cause there wasn't actually
a bell in this house,

or near this house.

But I wanted a shot to, um...

There, of the bell ringing,

which, again, is a composite.

That's a model bell, a little bell,

probably, sort of, six inches high,

shot on a, kind of, little model stage

on the side of the set one day,

and then comped into
a wide shot of the house.

I'm a little old
for Juliet, don't you think?

This.

This is a scene that went through
several iterations in the cut.

I'm still undecided about

whether we ended up with
the right iteration,

but it's an iteration which functions.

Um, I think the actors are both...

really marvelous in this scene.

The Aladdin's cave of jewels.

Yeah, it is like
Aladdin's cave, isn't it?

Wear this.

She clutches her nightgown
to her throat, and then...

she puts this lovely
string of pearls on her,

and stands there.

And of course, now, she doesn't clutch
her nightgown to her throat.

What does that mean?

Who's seducing who?

Who knows what in this scene?

-Why not?
-Because...

He's still like a schoolboy,

and she's like a cross
between Mrs. Robinson,

and...

his godmother,

and the kind of...

eminently desirable siren.

Yes.

Are you sure?

I'm sure.

This, for me, Was always the...

"Happy Birthday, Mr. President" moment.

Yeah.

The ultimate birthday candle blowout...

before...

the great gift that she's
about to bestow upon him,

this boy who's, I assume he's a virgin.

We think he's a virgin.

This feels a little coy,
I know it's a bit coy,

this soft focus, sort of,
they get into bed together.

I'm not sure what I feel about that,

but I didn't want to go
into a full sex scene,

'cause I don't know what
the story was, really.

I think the story of the next sex scene
is clear and wonderful,

but the point of that scene
is that they had sex,

and he wakes up,

and he's suddenly...

reborn, in a way.

We had a version,
didn't we, one iteration,

as you said, which focused on the jewels

while the act of consummation
was underway.

Yes, Which I liked.

Because they'd
thrown all the jewels

onto the floor in the longer version
of the scene,

in this precious Aladdin cave,
and was just in the way.

Yeah.

There Was something
rather marvelous about that.

Yeah, I think I should have
dug my heels in about that.

I think that was probably wrong
to change that, never mind.

Here is, really, Adam,
in the Garden of Eden.

He's just had the apple,
and he's starving.

Now he's having the lamb shoulder.

It was last night's dinner.

He's also a bit knackered.

And he's utterly exhausted,

and he wakes up and he...

thinks he's missed her,
he's late, oh, my God!

And then, no, he's not late.

And he's so happy to think

of the night that he's had.

And the lunch he's going to have,

he thinks.

Wellington!

Little does he know she's already gone.

What, sir?

The carriage?

Don't you know?

Mistress took it, sir.

Where'd they go?

No idea.

Town?

It's a lovely day for your birthday,
Master Ashley.

So, that wall in front of the house,

we should say, is something
the art department built,

'cause although
it's a very beautiful house,

it didn't quite have the feeling
of a farmstead

in the way we wanted, and that
gave the front of the house

- a bit of a yard.
- And obviously, that little

bit of the house there
is dropped in later.

So, this is shot some 30 miles away
from the house.

I can't remember the name
of the common, can you?

It's Headley, I think.

Headley Heath.

This is the other moment where we see
Rachel all on her own.

I thought it was important
to have that little...

over-cranked piece of Rachel...

looking utterly impregnable
and unreadable,

as she is here.

She's wearing a veil,

but oddly,

when she puts up her veil,

it becomes even harder to read her face,

which is a fine paradox.

Quite clear.

There was a lot off lack from
the studio about that shot,

which I never could understand.

I think they wanted
the veil to be less veil, veily.

I think it was absolutely iconic.

LOADER Yeah, I know, well, it's become
the poster in some places.

I know your godfather disapproves of me.

So, this Was
a wood just up the hill

from where my digs were
when we were shooting down in Surrey,

and I kept walking up here
at weekends and seeing this...

really enchanted secret place

off the beaten track,
off the road, off the path,

with this strange coppicing
effect of these young trees.

And although we'd earmarked
another bluebell wood,

and we had teams of
people bluebell watching,

so that we wouldn't miss
the bluebell season,

I couldn't help but thinking
we were missing a trick

by not shooting this scene here.

So, in the end, that's what we did.

It was a lucky and well-prepared,

and much struggled over coincidence

of fine weather and bluebells.

In fact, the bluebells
were just on the turn,

but you can't see in the picture

that they're just about to go.

And this is a really important
turning point in the story,

and a very important scene,
which I don't think is in the...

book at all, this scene, is it?

It's certainly not
in the original movie either.

No. That's right.

This is a kind of key shot in the film.

What is she thinking?

Who's doing what to who?

Who got what out of that
exchange of bodily fluids?

Poor boy.

Let me get up.

He has no idea what's
coming down the pike.

Then her wonderful, kind of,
practical matter-of-factness now.

Here.

Thank you.

If I'd known I was
coming into a fortune,

I would have given you
a considerably larger pearl.

It's lovely, thank you.

Yeah, there's not many people

wiping themselves down
in Jane Austen, Roger.

I don't remember
that bit of persuasion, I must say.

Shall we go?

Shall we go?

He can barely walk.

I remember going
up there the next day

with my elder daughter, Rosie,

and seeing the squashed areas
where we'd put equipment

and the actors had lain,

and being quite affected
by the oddness of it all.

So, here's tisane...

Birthday brew.

...which is now reeking of suspicion.

Special brew.

Twig soup.

And then he proceeded
to dance around the house,

up and down the stairs, up and down!

And then really...

So,

I wanted him to drink here.

That's my daughter, one of my daughters.

Because I wanted it to be unclear

as to whether he was...

freaking out because of...

fatigue and alcohol or...

because he'd been poisoned.

Well, he has drunk a bottle
of wine before lunch, after all.

He's drunk a Whole bottle
of champagne, hasn't he, before lunch?

Yeah.

Mind you, Kev, that wouldn't have
any effect on you whatsoever.

I do my best.

The happiest of men.

So, we used these tilt lenses here

just to make the focus
even more tentative.

Drink to my happiness,

and the reason...

As the poor chap

digs himself further and further
into ignominy.

...my wife?

I think Sam is really marvelous
in this scene, I must say.

My darling.

Have you gone out of your mind?

Of course not.

Please.

I think the birthday excitement
has gone to Philip's head.

We should retire to the next room.

This is the second time she comes

back on him after one of
these things, isn't it,

after the wash basin scene?

I have known shame in my life,

terrible shame,

but this is the worst.

This staircase was an important
part of our location search, wasn't it?

It was always going to be a key moment.

Why should I be ashamed of that?

You asked me, you asked me
what it was that I...

So, today, on this shooting day,

we had this person that Dinah brought in,

who designed our pearls for us.

And she sat there all afternoon
as we shot this scene,

restringing pearl necklaces.

I think we only had three to play with.

So every time we popped one,

she would sit there, nimbly, swiftly,

preparing it,

a fresh one for the next take.

It was quite hard to
make this work because...

I don't think he's trying to strangle her,

and yet, something in what he does

breaks these pearls, and something...

makes her, in a later scene, say,

"I can't go through it again.
I can't go through it again,

the hands at my throat."

It's as though she's referencing Ambrose
doing something similar...

to her in Italy.

I've been worried about you for so long.

It's beautiful coming back
to this church when it's empty,

and these two forlorn
figures sitting so separate.

Yeah, with the rain
and the light and everything.

The rain on the windows.

And their separation is enhanced

by the appearance of this...

effigy, this tomb.

It's like the Arundel Tomb.

Just sort of based
on the Larkin Arundel Tomb.

So, I wanted this image
of these two people

together forever in eternity,

and the art department
knocked out that couple.

I think Alice told me it was made by

one of her teachers at
Wimbledon Art College.

I think it might
even be of the Arundel Tomb,

or very closely modeled upon it.

I asked her to marry me.

Ironically, not far at all
from where we shot this.

I shall continue to ask her.

When, exactly, did you ask her?

The moment I came of age.

And here is quite an important
bit of plot coming up.

And it's a plot that
kind of tie these away,

the rather arcane mechanism

whereby du Maurier explains

why Rachel shouldn't marry Philip.

It's quite complicated.

If you listen really
closely, it makes sense,

but I think that most
people watching the film

will kind of get the gist of it,

and just accept that it all...

ties up properly.

I mean, the wife
was basically property at that point.

Yeah.

And she had no independence, really,

except in the most
aristocratic of circles.

But I Was aware,
both as a writer and as a director,

that it's a slightly
difficult passage in the film,

and leaned heavily
on Rael Jones' score here

to gravitas to what is...

Everything, the house,
everything reverts to you.

Plot.

I'd share everything with her,

every penny, she knows that.

A wife can't send money
out of the country.

Which is the last thing we did
on the day in this church.

We crammed a lot into two days.

And in fact, the coach you
can see in the background

is not her coach.

It's his coach.

To save money, we doubled up on coaches.

-Muggins!
-Muggins, Muggins!

Hello, Philip.

I invited Mary Pascoe to
stay in the house with me

as my companion.

This vicar's daughter
suddenly finds herself

elevated into the most
glorious position...

as...

I can teach you if you like.

Companion and chaperone.

A companion and chaperone to this

glamorous, well-traveled,
sophisticated woman.

But as she leaves the room...

I don't want to be in the way.

...one gets a immediate sense
of her servitude

and her humility.

And indeed, she only
lasts a couple of days...

before she gets the chop,
gets sent back to the Pascoes.

And he's faced
with this terrible humiliation,

not being allowed to close
a door in his own house...

because she's frightened
that he might jump on her.

So, the water tastes funny?

That's interesting.

Why does that water taste funny?

Is there something in it?

Hard to tell.

He's certainly febrile.

So, these nightmare images
we shot throughout

the course of the shoot, didn't we?

We shot them on a film camera,

a film camera, 35-mil film camera,

which was hand cranked,

which gives it this special quality,
and this...

odd sense of...

ends running out, being overexposed.

He wakes up from his fever,
and how kind she is,

how devoted she is,

how long suffering she is.

How could we suspect that he's being...

poisoned by her?

And you can see the view
replacement outside the window there.

Yeah, as opposed to the A-28

covered in heavy goods vehicles,

that's rather a nice landscape.

And the Pascoe girl?

It's a classic case of a clean-shaven man
being shaven again.

Hence the good lather.

And the nice sound effects.

Glad to see Wellington's
cutting back the laburnum.

Ah, the laburnum.

If a horse gets a mouthful
of that, it would kill them.

Oh, yes.

Again, elderly peasant in background

meaninglessly shoveling sheaves.

Don't expect you to remember everything.

But this is great, look at that.

Who'd have known that a vegetable could be
such a source of menace in a film?

Here.

Again, it's the difficulty
of the compression

of quite a long period of
his convalescence here that...

we had to try and achieve.

Whilst he gets a bit
stronger, keeps drinking,

gets a bit stronger,

tosses and turns.

Gets iller before he gets stronger.

Meanwhile, she's still going out.

Where do you go?

Where?

Are you worried I'll tire the horses?

No, no.

I'm worried you're about to leave.

Are you leaving me?

This is his last attempt, really,
to try and win her back, isn't it,

this fear of her leaving.

Soon, none of this will seem quite so bad.

You belong here.

In a little while, you'll be strong again,

and everything will be just
as it was before I came.

You're at the beginning of everything.

A boy?

How can I live with a boy?

What it must have been like
to be told what she's now telling him,

with everything he's been through.

Wandering around,
miserable and wet-nosed,

looking for its mother.

Drink.

So, this, eventually, came here,
this scene, after...

being the second half

of the scene that lands much,
much earlier in the film.

Again, it's something
which was unpredictably...

much better placed where it is now...

She can't help herself.
She'll take every...

...and it's to do
with dropping these little...

She'll ruin us. She'll ruin...

...danger points,
these activating little letters,

which drive the plot.

Dropping it in a little bit later
made a huge difference.

Nothing.

What was it?

Nothing.

And compels him...

to follow her...

to, bizzarely,

Amersham.

Who would have thought that
Amersham would yield up

such a wonderful location for...

an 18th century, 19th century town.

Although, when we realized,

it must have been first
horse change out of London,

didn't we, 'cause it's a town
with many, many coaching inns.

Yes, probably exactly one day's

carriage journey with
a coach-and-four out of town.

And it rained all day and
we just embraced the rain,

we shot in the rain.

That's my other daughter
plucking a chicken.

And the scene We came
to know as the poker scene.

Because I asked him.

Why?

Why not?

I needed advice.

What for?

Not your business.

How long have you been lying to me?

They both did really well in this scene.

It's a very difficult scene, isn't it?

If I'd told you he was here,
it would have made you sick again.

Send him away.

Send him away!

I can't remember,
where were we in the shoot at this point?

- Pretty early.
- Week three or something?

Week two, week three.

Pretty early on.

Why not? Why not?

Why shouldn't I have a life of my own

and make a life for myself, and do as I...

Mike operated everything in this film,

and he's so good at this kind
of doco approach to a scene,

where he's riding the camera
on his shoulder

and he's winging it

and following the rhythm of it,

and it gives this a wonderful
immediacy and truth.

Has incredible energy, doesn't it?

Go on.

Call for them.

So, this is kind of stalemate.

This is where, if you like,

their marriage, such as it is,

grinds to a terrible...

Beckett-like state of...

All square, but nothing
but misery on both sides.

And we think the film's stuck here now.

He can't but pity her.

He can't but forgive her,

in spite of his suspicions.

And she's genuinely, genuinely...

in despair at the suffering she's caused,

and the repetition of
this pattern in her life.

And he comes and sits next to her.

I think I read in the script
something like

they grab each other like
a pair of drowning people,

holding on desperately to each other.

And it's very affecting,
and it's very convincing.

And by convincing, I mean,
I believe in Rachel's...

I certainly believe in his misery
and his confusion,

but I believe in hers, too.

I think it's marvelous,

and that sort of echo of
the caress on his hair

in the misery.

And then along
comes this final irrefutable

letter from the grave,

a letter that's been hidden
in a coat that's been...

distributed to the farm workers.

And there was other stuff here,
wasn't there?

There was other stuff in the script.
He collected the laburnum seeds.

He then did a kind of
experiment with his tisane.

And it worked in the script
and it works in the book,

but it felt a little bit labored
and unnecessary in the film.

When we are kind of...

We kind of got to the end now.

We've got to the end and...

And all this time, she's been...

Louise hears him finally admit...

that he's been an idiot,
that he's been hoodwinked,

that he's been taken in.

And she does this wonderful thing of...

holding his hand, and then, in my mind,

she gives thanks to God
for his deliverance.

And then, there's this final hurrah.

It's sunny.

For the first time, there's a tablecloth.

Everything on the table is summery.

Everybody is entranced by this woman,

who, for the first time, is not wearing

the black dress of mourning,

but is starting a new life.

Everyone, that is, apart from Philip,

who's seen through her now.

He's seen all her tricks.

And then, let it stand for a while.

Then, we will go out into
the little courtyard,

if it wasn't too hot.

And here she is
nattering away, happily,

talking about Ambrose,
in the finest of moods...

on this lovely, perfect, summer's day.

Here.

Oh, no, not that one, that's Philip's.

Thank you.

Here.

No, thank you.

But this is a special batch.

Such a beautiful color as well,
this dress, wasn't it?

Was that always the color
you and Dinah talked about?

Well, We Wanted it
to be blue in the blue room.

Yeah.

It's very interesting.

'Cause that room had had a...

All the wallpaper in that room
was hand-painted, wasn't it,

by some associates of Alice Normington's.

Who will come riding with me?

Oh, we could take the carriage
if you prefer.

You go.

Louise and I have
some business to discuss.

You do?

What a waste, on a day like this.

Louise and Philip,
definitely co-conspirators going now.

I shall go on my own.

I won't be long!

Finish your tea.

Where are you off to?

I don't know.

Up Martin Hill, perhaps,

or into the woods.

Do you think the
bluebells are still there?

The bluebells are long gone, I'm afraid.

You might try the cliff path.

Yeah.

This is a scene
full of ambiguity and possibility.

You're looking better.

You look...

He's sending her to her death,

and yet, here,

she apologizes,
but we don't really know what for.

Does she know...

where she's being sent?

He runs through those windows,
I love that glimpse of him.

Laburnum seeds, letters, I don't know.

And then is this rather
crazed search.

She's poisoned me, don't you see?

It's Couch, the lawyer.

Which we ended up into cutting
with these shots of her riding.

They came late in the day.

We went out and did a
little day's shooting

with a riding double and a horse.

And I think they're really,
really good little...

cutaways, really helpful.

This glorious day, this woman riding,

riding, riding to her death.

Very different from the book,

where the fatal accident
all occurs around a foot bridge

to the garden that Rachel
has been landscaping.

Well, translate it for me, please!

"Dearest Rachel, on second thought,

if you really cannot bring yourself..."

Again, that's in the Chiltons, isn't it?

Long way from Devon.

"I still don't think it's a good idea,

but then again, Italy and some sunshine

may be the making of him."

Is that it?

Philip, inquiries were made.

My father...

What inquiries?

In matters of the heart, it seems that

Enrico Rainaldi is more Greek
than he is Italian.

He likes boys, Philip.

That's not in the book either.

No. "More Greek than Italian."

So, here's a little piece of
magic switching rider.

So, that's the stunt rider
going off on the horse bareback.

In a early cut,

he got to the cliff edge and
she was still hanging there,

but it felt terribly stage-y,
and terrible contrived,

almost as though she'd been
hanging on, waiting for him to turn up.

And it seemed,

on reflection, in the hard light
of the cutting room,

much more sensible to have her already...

a dead parrot.

With the ghastly injured horse beside her.

And in a Way,
that is so eloquent here, isn't it?

Yeah.

She's been covered up by a sack.

- And the horse is...
- Puffofsmoke.

The horse is getting
humanely disposed of.

And we're back where we started,

still really not knowing...

did she,

didn't she?

Same little child, Corinne.

But now,

a new family.

What can I teach them?

What can I tell them?

And if you look carefully
and you want to...

be a viewer of a suspicious nature...

you might notice...

that the very final frames of this film...

hold a suggestion...

of even more complexity.

Rachel, my torment.