Best Picture: #13
Original Release Date: April 12, 1940
Rating: Passed
Runtime: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Quick Impressions:
My daughter and I already watched Rebecca together two years ago when her summer project was Alfred Hitchcock. (We had intended to watch classic films of a variety of stars and directors, each in turn. We started with Hitchcock because we happened upon a children’s biography at the library. Then she fell in love with The Lodger, and one Hitchcock classic led to another until we ran out of summer. This usually happens with our summer projects. That was how “Countries” somehow became “Australia plus random YouTube videos of secret raves in Parisian catacombs.” Summer is never long enough.)
At any rate, Rebecca is the first of these films we’ve encountered so far that is on a shortlist of my personal favorite movies. I first saw Rebecca as a very young child. When I was three or four, the movie haunted me, confounded me. I became obsessed with it because watching it made me feel so afraid, but I couldn’t understand why.
I remember asking my mother a string of questions. “Why are they so afraid? What is she afraid of? Who is Rebecca?” When informed that Rebecca was dead, I kept waiting to see her ghost. “No, we don’t see the ghost,” my mother told me patiently. Confused, I persisted, “Then why are they so afraid?” How could someone be haunting them if there was no ghost?
Despite this early fascination with the film, the memory of which persisted vividly for years, I did not fully comprehend the plot. (This is probably because I was paying more attention to Mrs. Danvers than to the boring talking.) So when I read the novel as required summer reading when I was fifteen, I was completely stunned by the shocking reveal. I hadn’t even known there was a twist. I was so shocked and delighted. And then there’s another twist, too. It’s a very twisty story, which is a surprise bonus, considering the careful mood building of the first half. The novel doesn’t even need the twist to be captivating reading. But the unexpected turn makes you realize you’ve been reading a different story than you thought. It’s a great book. I love the book.
When I first watched the movie again as a teenager, after reading the novel, I was disappointed by the film’s changes to the character of Maxim de Winter. For one thing, Laurence Olivier was just not the way I had imagined Maxim when reading the book. For another, I simply detest the way the movie changes some key details of the story. I understand why these changes were necessary. Aspects of the novel would not work in a mainstream release in 1940, at a time when films had to work within the confines of the Hays Code. Still.
I would recommend that anyone new to Rebecca read the novel before watching the movie. The movie will spoil certain surprises that enhance the book tremendously. But you don’t really need to be surprised when you watch Hitchock’s film. The movie gives us atmospheric, psychological horror at its finest.
Plot:
A timid young woman who survives as a rich lady’s paid companion is swept off her feet by tormented widower Maximilian de Winter. Maxim is wealthy, and his company is sought after, but he’s very sad. The protagonist soon learns that he can’t get over the recent loss of his wife, Rebecca, beautiful, accomplished, charming, beloved by all who met her. Maxim’s young bride returns with him to his ancestral home, Manderley, a beautiful estate in Cornwall. The housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, terrifies her. Totally devoted to her late mistress, Mrs. Danvers regards the young bride with scrutiny, and as time goes on, the second Mrs. de Winter feels increasingly terrorized by the omnipresent ghost of Rebecca.
The Good:
My favorite Hitchcock film is The Birds (another Daphne du Maurier adaptation), but I do love Rebecca. For one thing, it’s been kicking around in my consciousness (sub and otherwise) since I was a very young child. Watching with my daughter, I suddenly realized, “Oh wait a minute! This movie definitely influenced my own work.” I didn’t even notice that one character of mine in particular behaves not unlike Mrs. Danvers—and her name is Rebecca! And I first wrote all that at a time when I hadn’t seen the film in years!
Until watching Gone with the Wind and Rebecca in sequence, I didn’t really think about the fact that David O. Selznick produced two such acclaimed Oscar-winning hits right in a row. From what I’ve read, though, Hitchcock resented Selznick’s interference. I’m glad Hitchcock edited the film in camera if that’s what spared us from seeing smoke rise in the shape of an R. (Maybe I don’t understand Selznick’s vision, but I can’t imagine that being anything but awful.)
Hitchcock’s Rebecca is an absolute masterwork of atmospheric horror. As a preschooler, I wasn’t even following the plot, but I still felt intense fear. Besides Best Picture, the film also won Best Cinematography for the work of George Barnes, which is pretty magnificent. I absolutely love the use of shadow in this movie. (So often, tricks of the light seem to cast the shadow of prison bars, or a restraining grate on Joan Fontaine. Then, in a late scene, the illusory bars become real, an actual pattern on her dress.) The film’s use of shadow is just magnificent. I think I mentioned it to my daughter every five minutes or so. Besides the well-placed shadows, and the alluring tricks of light and shadow, I also just love the way the movie looks, the way the scenes are set. So often, Joan Fontaine’s timid protagonist looks like she is just one more piece of furniture in an already crowded room. And she’s the piece that doesn’t quite match. Emphasis on this is probably possible because they’re using deep focus photography to keep all parts of the room in focus, so Fontaine’s character literally looks trapped in a house that is swallowing her up. She’s haunted by Rebecca. We never see the spectral form of the woman, but the entire house is a visible, tangible reminder of Rebecca. All her stuff is there.
By methods that may not be entirely non-sadistic, Hitchcock manages to elicit excellent performances from lead actress Joan Fontaine (as the timid, tortured second Mrs. de Winter) and supporting actress Dame Judith Anderson (as the ever-present, never-blinking Mrs. Danvers). Fontaine’s constant grimacing gets a little grating, but it does help ratchet up the audience’s growing feeling of misgiving, and she does seem very like the character described in the novel. (I know Laurence Olivier kept pushing for Vivien Leigh to play the role, but after just seeing her as Scarlett O’Hara, it’s hard to imagine her in the part. She’s a great actress, though. I’m sure she could have done it. Meanwhile, Selznick wanted Fontaine’s sister, Olivia “Melanie Wilkes” de Havilland, who is much easier to imagine since they look rather alike.) At times, Fontaine’s tortured expression gets a bit wearying, but she does capture the essence of the novel’s narrator.
Judith Anderson’s eyes are something else. She turns them this way, that way, every which way, and she almost never blinks (at Hitchcock’s suggestion). Good thing she only had to film this once! If she were doing the part that way on stage, think of the eyestrain, the headaches!
Both women received Oscar nominations, and so did lead actor Laurence Olivier, though I’ve never personally been fond of his take on Maxim de Winter. (I’m conflicted about this now. Olivier certainly is emotive. He does a wonderful job of telegraphing his agony. (There’s one moment in the cabin when he looks like Elijah Wood’s Frodo, hiding too near the Ring Wraiths.) I just don’t think he fits the character, and plus, the movie changes the character. I’ll say more about this later.)
The supporting cast is amazing. George Sanders, Nigel Bruce, and Gladys Cooper are perfect fits for Rebecca’s rakish cousin Jack Favell, and Maxim’s brother-in-law Giles and sister Bea. Then we have C. Aubrey Smith as Colonel Julyan, Reginald Denny as Frank Crawley, Leo G. Carroll as Dr. Baker, and Florence Bates as Mrs. Van Hopper. I spent the 1930s hoping for big stars and straining to recognize people. Now 1940 comes, and I recognize everybody (and not just because I’ve seen this movie before! What a supporting cast!). Leonard Carey makes a captivating Old Ben, and my daughter was quite taken with the dog.
Best Scene:
My favorite scene is the one that always fascinated me most as a child, when Mrs. de Winter wanders into the forbidden wing of the house to sneak a peek at Rebecca’s room. Mrs. Danvers is such an unusual character. She’s eerie when aloof, but so much creepier when friendly. The subtext in this scene is almost ridiculous—the way she parts that curtain! But the interplay between the tormented protagonist, and her elated tormentor is riveting. Watching this scene as a young child, I could never quite determine what was so terrifying. The answer seemed to be everything. I still find this riveting as an adult.
Best Action Sequence:
Obviously this film does not have the sort of action sequences I envisioned when I created this category for movie reviews. But I love the sequence when Joan Fontaine makes her alarming entrance to the costume party. For one thing, it takes her forever to walk down the stairs. My daughter, feeling nervous, declared that she wouldn’t watch until something happened. (She didn’t remember much from watching the movie when she was nine, but she remembered that something bad was about to happen.) She closed her eyes and waited. The suspense built and built! Finally, she exploded, “What’s she doing? Why is it taking so long?” I love what comes next even more. Everything happens then! I particularly love how fluidly the encouragement of suicide turns into something else entirely.
Best Scene Visually:
There is so much visual foreshadowing in this movie—the flowers, the fireplace, the sea. And I’ve mentioned that the whole thing looks captivating thanks to the light and shadow, and probably also to the well used technique of deep focus photography.
But what I find particularly captivating is the very ending. As a young child, that was one of the images I most remembered from the movie.
The scene with the home movie projector is also fascinating in that the light from Maxim’s projections literally flashes all over Joan Fontaine’s face.
The Negatives:
If you’re a purist who loves the novel, the film has several departures that might rankle you. How can I put this? I love the film Rebecca, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a faithful depiction of Daphne du Maurier’s novel. There’s a TV version starring Diana Rigg (as Mrs. Danvers) that I watched with my grandma in the late 90s that seemed like a better adaptation of the novel at the time. (At this point, I haven’t read the novel or seen that version in years, so I can’t vouch for the verdict of teen me.)
If pressed, I’ll admit that while I love the both book and the 1940 film, du Maurier’s novel is the greater work of the two. Hitchcock’s film, however, has charms of its own. It probably does depart from du Maurier’s vision of her story, but Hitchcock has vision of his own. Of course, Hitchcock had much less creative control here than he usually did. Producer David O. Selznick interfered a lot. But since Hitchcock edited the movie in camera (to prevent further meddling), I assume he was at least reasonably satisfied with what he gives us.
The first time I saw Rebecca as a teen, I was pointed dissatisfied with Laurence Olivier’s version of Maxim de Winter. It makes me sound extremely contrary perhaps. (“Olivier is the greatest actor of his generation.” “Hmm, well, I don’t like him.”) But I just find him slightly wrong for the part. He seems younger than I had imagined, or if not younger, more visibly vulnerable. Obviously Maxim is a tormented man, but Olivier expresses this torment differently than I had imagined. I imagined Maxim a bit older. Normally, actors from that period look older than their counterparts from our own era. Usually, we learn that at actor is 35, and we think, “What?! He looks fifty.” Olivier is only thirty-three, and he looks twenty-seven. In fact, he looks the exact same age as Joan Fontaine. (Actually, she is ten years younger, but you really can’t tell.) He doesn’t seem like an older man. He seems like a young man in a beard, made up to look older. His looks aren’t really the issue, though. It’s just his style of self-presentation. All his vulnerability is on the surface, completely obvious to everyone. Half the time, he looks like he’s performing the last half of Macbeth. I get it, but I don’t think everyone else around him should. (Now, granted, when I read the book, I was fifteen, so perhaps I had a false impression of how older men should seem.) It has taken me a very long time to warm to Olivier’s Maximilian de Winter.
Now, in fairness to Olivier, the biggest problem I have with the movie’s Maxim de Winter is that the movie changes a small (but key) thing about him (undoubtedly to be in compliance with the Hays Code). This really rankled me as a teen. I complained, “This makes him seem like all he ever does is nothing. He just stands around. His hobbies include hovering on the edges of cliffs, hoping some woman will come by and do something.” But to me, it does change the character of Maxim. In the film, he doesn’t just seem ineffectual, he is ineffectual. Why would anyone love somebody who has no agency and never does a single thing? (I never had these problems as a child because I totally ignored Maxim’s character to focus on the tormented protagonist and her eerie tormentor. But when I was older and read the book, I felt quite drawn to the Maxim character. This version fundamentally changes him.)
Part of my reluctance to accept Olivier’s Maxim may be that I found the book’s narrator so relatable. At fifteen, I was always wandering around being a shy, compliant weirdo. I had no interest at all in people like Rhett Butler, but Maxim de Winter is just the type of lost soul whose shenanigans I could get drawn into. I find the Maxim in the book, if not exactly attractive, at least vaguely compelling. The Maxim in the movie just hangs around looking sick.
Then again, everyone looks bizarrely tortured in this version of Rebecca. Joan Fontaine really almost overdoes it. I would find her continuously tortured expression unrealistically excessive except that I know that I have resting panic face myself. (My features idly slip into a default expression of anxiety. Of course, I do have massive amounts of social anxiety, but sometimes my face just looks like that. Making another expression takes conscious effort, and then I end up overdoing it, which gives me further anxiety.)
What’s really problematic is not Fontaine’s performance, of course, but the way Hitchcock famously elicited it. Supposedly, he told her everyone else on set didn’t like her. The rest of the cast thought she couldn’t act, that she was wrong for the role. Such sadistic methods are hardly commendable, though as female Hitchcock stars in du Maurier projects go, Fontaine faired reasonably well. She should be glad he didn’t hurl live birds into her face! Surprise! (As far as I’m aware, Fontaine didn’t end up hospitalized like Tippi Hedren. Then again, Hedren’s facial reactions in The Birds are priceless, much better than Fontaine’s vague grimacing.)
Both Hitchcock’s genius and the sadism of his methods are undeniable. (Well, I guess you can deny his genius if you want. I think he’s a genius. I love his films. I’m also very glad, as a woman, that I never had to work for him as an actress.) Gone With the Wind wears its objectionable elements on its sleeve, and so does any project by Alfred Hitchcock. His love of torturing women (particularly blondes) is disturbing, doubly so because his awful methods actually did improve his work. (Women look so intense when being psychologically tortured, you know!)
Another problematic element of Hitchcock’s Rebecca is one of its most fascinating. Under Hitchcock’s direction, Dame Judith Anderson unblinkingly portrays one of history’s most notorious, terrifying, shockingly monstrous creatures—a lesbian! I mean, she never says she’s in love with Mrs. de Winter; she simply builds her a shrine and slinks around with her hand up her nightgown, caressing her furs. The subtext of these scenes is pretty blatant. The book spins this all a bit differently. In the novel, Mrs. Danvers raised Rebecca. The older woman has not only more of a history, but also considerably more agency. It’s slightly problematic that the film seems to treat potential lesbianism as one of the many unspoken deviancies in a growing vortex of evil.
Honestly, though, I can’t help but admire what the film achieves. In this movie, Rebecca is one terrifying woman. She is pretty much the only person who ever does anything. And she’s dead. The movie gives us a Mrs. Danvers who was corrupted by Rebecca, and who may be literally tormented by her ghost. Maxim de Winter, likewise, lets Rebecca act on him, or near him. He just watches. And, of course, Joan Fontaine’s character gives us an entire story called Rebecca, in which she fails even once to tell us her own name. (That’s the same in the book.) In the novel, everyone is haunted by Rebecca, but in the movie, no one truly seems to have any agency or to get anything done but Rebecca. The movie makes slight tweaks to Maxim and Mrs. Danvers to drive this point home.
Overall:
Rebecca is a film that has fascinated me for a long time. My daughter ranks it sixth, between Grand Hotel and The Great Ziegfeld. I would put it substantially higher than that, but I’m terrible at ranking. She said, “I liked how the ambiance was just so spooky,” and had nothing bad to say about it. Still, she ranks it sixth. I personally would love to see this story told from the point of view of Maxim de Winter. Even more, I’d love to see it narrated by Mrs. Danvers, which would probably change the genre.