Rebecca was
relatively faithful to its source, the novel by Daphne du Maurier, a British
author Hitchcock returned to decades later when he made The Birds from one of her stories. Rebecca is like a Bronte sisters Gothic romance transposed to the
20th century, featuring an innocent heroine who marries a strange brooding man,
who brings her to his castle by the roiling sea. The servants, especially the housekeeper,
are holding secrets.
As with all the great films from the period, Rebecca is a masterful combination of a
smart script spoken by superb actors playing memorable characters in an
unforgettable setting. Joan Fontaine, an unknown actress when chosen as the
unnamed protagonist, brought a fresh and natural presence to the screen. Much
like her contemporary, Ingrid Bergman, Fontaine was the antithesis of the
artificial
Maxim de Winter, the man who rescues her from the
drudgery of serving as paid companion to an American snob, corresponds to the
fairytale prince in love with the servant girl but also to the haunted men with
dark pasts of Gothic fiction. He is played by the great Laurence Olivier as
moody and mysterious, barely keeping his demons in their bottles. The cork
keeps popping whenever a stray word or reference triggers an angry sulk or an
explosive outburst.
The menacing housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, is a grim
and unsmiling killjoy fanatically devoted to Rebecca, “the first Mrs. de
Winter,” as she calls her.
Rebecca stands
apart from most of Hitchcock’s films. There is relatively little suspense and
less humor than usual. Encouraged by the film’s hands-on producer, David O.
Selznick, Hitchcock suffused Rebecca
with a lush atmosphere of obsession and dread, often visualized in scenes where
the second Mrs. de Winter appears bound in cages of shadow as she explores the
twilight chambers of Manderley.
7:30 p.m.
July 9,
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