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Rebecca
(1940)
This classic film marked Alfred Hitchcock's Hollywood
debut. A young naive woman (Joan Fontaine) is in Monte Carlo
where she is employed as the companion of a wealthy woman,
when she meets the charming, handsome and extremely wealthy
Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) who is still deeply troubled
by the death of his wife Rebecca in a boating accident the
year before. The two fall in love, have a whirlwind romance
and get married. De Winter takes his new wife to live with
him in his large English mansion called Manderlay, where the
woman has to settle into an unfamiliar role as mistress of
the house, with a large number of servants, lorded over by
the sinister housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Anderson) who deeply
resents Maxim's new bride. Everywhere the newlywed woman is
reminded of Rebecca. Why is her husband still so disturbed
over the death of his first wife? Who is the figure in the
unused west wing of the mansion? And how did Rebecca really
die?
This film is a spellbinding combination of romance and suspense. It's almost like a ghost story at times, where the ghost never actually appears. Rebecca is never seen, she is dead when the story opens, and there are no flashback scenes or even pictures of her, and yet she completely dominates the film. Everywhere, Fontaine finds Rebecca’s monogrammed possessions and she is referred to constantly. The household staff always refer to Rebecca as “Mrs. de Winter”, making it seem like Fontaine is her husband’s girlfriend rather than his wife. In one sequence she is in the study and answers the telephone saying “Mrs. de Winter? She’s been dead for a year”, and hanging up before remembering.
Fontaine’s character is never referred to by her first name throughout the entire
film. She is someone who has entered a completely alien world; she was not born
into the wealthy privileged world of Manderlay and early on tells her husband-to-be
that she doesn’t feel she belongs in this world.
The production is lavish with
some spectacular sets, especially for the interiors of Manderlay, and the whole
thing looks beautiful. The shoot was far from easy, however. This was one of
the very few Hitchcock film in which he had no input into the script, and he
resented producer David O. Selznick’s “hands on” style of production. It was
also tough for Joan Fontaine. Olivier had wanted his then-girlfriend Vivien Leigh
to play Fontaine’s role and when she didn’t get the part, he treated Fontaine
very badly, which really unsettled her. Hitchcock noticed this and told Fontaine
that everyone on set hated her, which made her extremely shy and uneasy, which
was what Hitchcock wanted for the performance.
However Olivier and Fontaine are
both perfect in their roles, and this whole film is a masterpiece from Hollywood’s
Golden Age. It remains gripping, suspenseful entertainment. It also features
what, for the time, was quite a strong lesbian subtext with the character of
Mrs. Danvers who is completely obsessed by her memories of Rebecca. This is a
film about memory and the way the past dominates the present. Watch out for Hitchcock’s
trademark cameo towards the end of the film, walking past a telephone box.
-Robert
Foster
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2004-2009 Thoughtsonfilm.com |
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Director:
Alfred
Hitchcock
Writer: Robert E. Sherwood, Joan Harrison, Philip MacDonald, Michael Hogan, Daphne Du Maurier
Starring: Laurence
Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Judith Anderson, Nigel Bruce, Reginald Denny
Distributor: United
Artists
Runtime: 130
min
Rating: Approved
Release Date: April
12, 1940
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