Rebecca/Mansfield Park/Brief Encounter Emilia Fox 2008 DVD Top-quality

Collection of three classic dramas. ‘Rebecca’ (1997) is based on the gothic romance novel by Daphne Du Maurier. Emilia Fox stars as the second wife of recently widowed aristocrat, Max de Winter (Charles Dance), whose first wife, the eponymous Rebecca (Lucy Cohu), was – from all accounts – a beautiful socialite adored by the Manderley housekeeper Mrs Danvers (Diana Rigg). An innocent, shy young middle class girl half her husband’s age, the new Mrs de Winter finds herself lost and alone in a world where social graces and accomplishments are everything. But unfortunately for her, she soon discovers that the bitterness and resentment of Mrs Danvers is the least of her troubles. ‘Mansfield Park’ (2007) is a television adaptation of the popular novel by Jane Austen. At the age of ten, Fanny Price goes to live at Mansfield Park, the estate of her aunt’s husband, Sir Thomas (Douglas Hodge). Clever, studious, and a writer with an ironic imagination and fine moral compass, Fanny (Billie Piper) becomes especially close to her cousin Edmund (Blake Ritson), Thomas’s younger son. Fanny is soon possessed of beauty as well as a keen mind and comes to the attention of a neighbour, Henry Crawford (Joseph Beattie). Sir Thomas promotes this match, but to his displeasure, Fanny has a mind of her own, asking Henry to prove himself worthy. In ‘Brief Encounter’ (1945), a respectable, happily-married doctor (Trevor Howard) comes to the aid of an equally upstanding housewife (Celia Johnson) when a passing train blows cinder into her eye. Thus begins a tentative romance, conducted in the tearooms and railway cafe of a small English town.