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Rating:  - Pathetic
I recently watched this movie after reading the exceptional novel by Wilkie Collins. I am not a purist. I realize that liberties must be taken when a book is converted to movie format. But this was downright ridiculous. When one must change the NAME of a main character just to fit in with their flawed storyline, that goes too far. Her name is Marian Halcombe, not Marian Fairlie. The brilliantly villainous Count Fosco is relegated to a simpering, unimaginative role. As for the plot, it is so far off from the actual story that they should have re-titled the movie. They have Hartwright involved in a scandal, they make Glyde into a sexual predator, and that's just the beginning of their perverse changes. If they had kept to the REAL plot, I think they could have pulled it off much better. Instead, they wasted time making characters who are nonexistent in the book into significant ones, and putting in scenes that changed the most fundamental parts of the story. There was absolutely no reason for any of the asinine changes they made. If I had watched this first, I would never have read the book, and I would have missed out on what is now one of my favorite novels. The book is a million times better. Don't bother with this movie--wait until there is a more faithful adaptation made (or the BBC gets smart and releases theirs on DVD.)
Rating: - Exceptionally poor - a better version exists
The 1998 version pales in comparison with the unavailable 1978/1982 BBC version with the exceptional Alan Badel as the evil Count Fosco. Beware purchasing this as the Ian Richardson version, because Ian Richardson was in both versions. If you must get a copy of "The Woman in White" right now, then order the 1998 version. Otherwise, write, e-mail, call, march and picket WGBH, BBC America and BBC England and lobby them to make the 1982 version available. The earlier version was produced in five 55 minute segments and was an oustanding piece of work.
Rating:  - Good Film-Noirish Type Film
I highly recommend this movie. Ignore the bad reviews. Perhaps those who have read the book hold a bad opinion of the movie. Most films could benefit from English subtitles, rather than closed captions. I wish WGBH Boston and Warner Brothers would take the hint, as sometimes the English are difficult to understand. They speak softer than Americans, and often the dialect is different as well.
Rating:  - A movie is not a book.
I adore Wilke Collins' book. The BBC is known for doing in depth productions spanning 4&5 hours of books, and THE WOMAN IN WHITE certainly could have benefitted by that type of production. Instead, they did what Hollywood frequently does, and take one major story thread of a book and turn that into a 2 hour movie, greatly discarding and cutting elements. In other words, they take the idea and make all elelments work for that idea. It DOES work. This adaptation is beautiful to look at, frame after frame looking like Marie Cassat paintings, and the drawn out, near-torturous suspense of the book is captured, even in this short version. It is true to the book in feeling, not details.
Unlike other viewers, I was aghast and really disgusted by the casting of the remarkably delicate and beautiful Tara Fitzgerald in this film. That alone is what makes this a 4 star film for me, and not 5. While she does have the brains and fire for Marian, the character is supposed to be almost hideous to look at, disturbingly masculine in form and manner, as ugly outside as she is heroic and beautiful inside. There was not even an attempt made in that direction for Ms. Fitzgerald. Horrible, unforgivable miscasting which colors every single element of the story. So forget the book.
This film is the story of two pretty sisters who read and live a gothic novel existence. Justine Waddel is in so many films I love - what a charmed career she leads. She is always fine, always a bit dazed and limp, rather bland, but she has such a slack-jawed cherubic face and reed thin coltish frame, we feel for her, and hate to see her tortured, as she invariably is. She is perfectly cast in the role of Laura, and the sister/family resemblance casting throughout is really wonderful.
Susan Vidler's Anne Catheric is wrenching, and the writing of her lines is a dead-on disturbing combination of deadpan innapropriate sexuality ("Do you want some?") and mental instability. Kika Martin's Madame Fosco is breathtakingly harrowing. She brings the complex character of the book into her few scenes intact by the frozen look of searching pain on her face. The stand out performance is Adie Allen as Margaret Porcher. Her presence grows from utilitarian to sultry to malignant, and she is just magnificent. In a role significantly cut down in importance from the book to this screen adaptation, she retains her presence. Margaret is to this story what Mrs. Danvers is to Rebecca, and it is so refeshing to see her cast as voluptous and earthy.
I don't say much about the men because this version uses them only as devices to advance the women's story. Mr. Hartwritght is handsome ... although his facial hair is at times anacronistic. (Why the "soul patch" under his lip in the last scenes? was he allready in production of another movie that required it?) James Wilby, perhaps best known from HOWARD'S END, plays a similarly unromantic and downright nasty role here as Sir Percival Glyde. Unlike other reviewers, I found Simon Callow wonderful... who else has that combination of attractiveness and revulsion. His Fosco is supposed to be the match and uber-mate-nemesis for Marian, had she been cast similarly this would have been explosive.
If you insist on expecting the book, you won't like this. Film is a different animal, and this does work completely in it's own right, even the change in Marian. The art direction, cinematography, costumes, and acting are all typical BBC top notch. Great gothic romance, heavy on the suspense, beautifully done.
Rating: - Impossible to Reconcile the Violently Negative Reviews with the Favorable Ones
I find it unusual that the reviews of this movie are so skewed at the very ends of the continuum of great to horrible. Whenever this happens, I am tempted to see the movie and judge for myself. That is what I suggest to viewers here. I have both read the book and seen the movie, and I, unusually it seems, like both. I obviously do not require pedantic faithfulness to the book in order to have a resulting good story.
It would take a lengthy mini-series to present this story as Wilkie Collins wrote it, and it is a magnificent book, in conception as well as in execution. It is written from the perspective of several characters in the book, and the differing viewpoints and their presentations are remarkably well done by Collins. The Moonstone may be the more popular of the two books, but Collins himself recognized the literary grandeur of The Woman in White, noting his authorship of it, not of The Moonstone, on his tombstone.
It would be immensely difficult, in my opinion, and probably would cost too much, to bring the book faithfully to the movie or television screen. This version is as good as we are likely to see, and, again in my opinion, this is a good version. If one has not read the book, and, as a practical matter, I think most viewers will not have, one will find this a compelling story, well told and uniformly well acted. Why should not those who have not read the book become familiar with Collins and this story and be entertained by it -- even if it is not entirely, or even largely, faith to the book? After all, there are many books that are not faithfully brought to production, but that does not necessarily mean that the story, as revised to fit time and pecuniary restraints of production, will not be entertaining. This story is.
So try it for yourself, even if you have read the book, and judge for yourself. Whenever I see such emotionally negative reviews, and when they are so intensely stated, resulting in so obviously distorted a view of the subject movie, I wonder if there is a reason, such as a somewhat narrow and tiresome attempt at display of learning (e.g., the reviewer, among few others sufficiently erudite, knows that this movie is quite different from the book), that accounts for the negativism, with no thought being given to the entertainment value of the movie, which should be the primary criterion of review.
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