About

Area53 banner which is a collection of lots of scattered pictures of things the blogger likes, from music artists and films to TV shows.

Categories

From the Past

Films on the to-do list

  • Armageddon Time
  • Black Widow
  • Chimes at Midnight
  • The Killing of a Sacred Deer
  • Last Christmas
  • Remember Sunday
  • Shazam! 2
  • Thor: Love and Thunder
  • Spy Guys

Rebecca (1940)

Film review: Rebecca (1940), directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Joan Fontaine plays a young, unnamed companion to Mrs Van Hopper (Florence Bates). They’re in the south of France on holiday. Residing in the same hotel is the rich widow Maximilian de Winter (Laurence Olivier).

Miss X and the considerably older Maxim de Winter get talking, and to summarise: end up marrying. He takes his new wife back to Manderley, his mansion back in England.

Mrs de Winter finds it difficult to establish herself as the lady of the house because she wasn’t born into this level of society, and besides, everyone’s still obsessed with the former Mrs de Winter – Rebecca – who died in a boating accident. The housekeeper in particular, Mrs Danvers (Judith Anderson), really seems to go out of her way to moon over the dead woman.

When I recorded this version of Rebecca, it was just because I had never seen an adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s novel (which I have yet to read) and thought it best to just start somewhere. Turns out it was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and is #124 on the IMDb Top 250 list.

My main interest in Rebecca as a story is that it’s supposed to be inspired by Jane Eyre. Manderley is a big country house, France is involved, it’s about a rich man marrying a much younger orphaned woman, and … well, that’s about it. It’s not particularly Jane Eyre like at all, but that’s good. It means it can be its own story.

Even if you don’t know much about Rebecca, you’ll probably have heard about Mrs Danvers, the archetypal strict housekeeper. Not a nice lady. I didn’t know she was mental, though. I expected her to be disapproving of the new Mrs de Winter because she liked Rebecca so much, but not that she would go all insane about it.

To be fair, Mrs de Winter should probably have anticipated there being something amiss about the masquerade costume. When the housekeeper keeps harping on about her previous mistress in dreamy tones and faraway eyes, you probably ought to suspect something’s up.

I didn’t fully understand why Mrs de Winter decided to cover up the broken statue either. She’s the new mistress of the manor, she can break whatever the hell she wants as far as I’m concerned, and no one should have anything to say about it – least of all the staff! She may have felt like a fish out of water, but come on.

That being said, it was very well acted, bearing in mind that 1930s/1940s overly melodramatic acting style, and I didn’t expect the story to take the turns it actually did. It’s an interesting story (at times predictable – Rebecca wasn’t a saint but actually a two-timing bitch? OMG say it ain’t so!), well played, with plenty of dramatic music and of course Joan Fontaine would go on to play Jane Eyre on the silver screen just a few short years later.

3.8 out of 5 secret doctors appointments.

Traxy

An easily distracted and over-excited introvert who never learns to go to bed at a reasonable time. Enjoys traveling (when there's not a plague on), and taking photos of European architecture. Cares for cats, good coffee and Boardwalk Empire. A child of her time, she did media studies in school and still can't decide what she wants to be when she grows up.

Let us know what you think!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.