Rebecca (1940) - film review

Whilst in Monte Carlo, working as a paid companion to a wealthy American woman, a young English girl falls under the spell of an aristocratic widower, Maximilian de Winter.  After a whirlwind romance, de Winter marries the girl and takes her back to his vast Cornish estate, Manderley.  There, the new Mrs de Winter receives a lukewarm reception from the servants, particularly the aloof Mrs Danvers.  The latter finds her a poor substitute for de Winter’s first wife, who died a year ago in mysterious circumstances...

Alfred Hitchcock’s extraordinary career in Hollywood began auspiciously with this atmospheric, and at times viscerally chilling, psychological drama, closely adapted from Daphne Du Maurier’s well-known novel.  Hitchcock had only just directed another adaptation of a Du Maurier novel – Jamaica Inn  - in England, and it is interesting to compare the style of the two films.  Rebecca clearly has the better production values, but it is also a more worthy film in less tangible ways. Hitchcock’s use of mood and suspense is much more subtle, the characters far better developed, the emotions more keenly felt.  The film has many elements and themes that will come to dominate much of the director’s subsequent work – latent mental disorder, transference (one individual assuming characteristics of another) and, of course, Hitchcock’s deep distrust (and fear) of powerful women.

Hollywood boss David O. Selznick had high hopes when he signed Hitchcock up for a seven year contract, expecting that their first collaboration, Rebecca, would achieve the status of Selznick’s other big production at the time, Gone With the Wind.  As it turned out, Hitchcock didn’t particularly warm to Selznick and he made just three films for him, preferring to be loaned out to the other major Hollywood studios.

The great Laurence Olivier heads an impressive cast of entirely British actors, which includes George Sanders as the thoroughly slimy Jack Favell and Judith Anderson as the sinister Mrs Danvers, one of Hitchcock’s recurring matriarchal villains.  As the film’s unnamed heroine, Joan Fontaine does an excellent job of conveying the anxiety of a young innocent who finds herself enmeshed in a suspenseful, emotionally fraught tale of murder, romance and intrigue.

Partly on account of Selznick’s mass publicising of the film, Rebecca proved to be a great success and secured Hitchcock’s reputation in Hollywood from the outset.  The film was nominated for ten Oscars and won two, for the Best Picture (Hitchcock’s only win in this category) and Best Cinematography (Black and White).  This is cited as the first American film to use deep focus photography, of the kind that Orson Welles later employed in Citizen Kane (1941) and which became one of the essential ingredients of classic film noir.   The high contrast cinematography and lavish gothic sets are what give Rebecca its haunting dreamlike quality and make it one of Hitchcock’s most compelling and disturbing films.

© James Travers 2008

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