Rebecca - La prima moglie

Director Alfred Hitchcock is renowned for his visual acuity, creating some of the most memorable shots in movie history; he also had a keen eye for beauty, casting some of Hollywood's most stunning actresses in iconic roles: Grace Kelly in Rear Window, Maureen O'Hara in Jamaica Inn, Tippi Hedren in The Birds, Ingrid Bergman in Spellbound, and Janet Leigh in Psycho, to name but a few. Perhaps his most enchanting leading lady was Joan Fontaine, who won an Oscar for her role in Suspicion (1941), but who was never more appealing than in her first film for Hitch, Rebecca, based on a novel by Daphne Du Maurier.

The gorgeous Fontaine plays a meek young woman (we never discover her name, but she's not the 'Rebecca' of the title) who falls for rich aristocrat 'Maxim' de Winter (Laurence Olivier) while working in the South of France. Equally besotted, Maxim proposes to the self-effacing beauty, and takes her back to his ancestral home, Manderley, which he once shared with his first wife Rebecca, before she drowned in a boating accident. The new Mrs. de Winter does her best to adapt to her new lifestyle, but is constantly under the shadow of her predecessor, with stern housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) being particularly disapproving of Maxim's new bride, deliberately driving a wedge between the married couple and even going so far as to try and talk Mrs. de Winter Mk. II into killing herself.

Thus far, the film is pure melodrama and sappy romance, and avid Hitchcock fans might be wondering where the murder and mystery is; worry, not, for this comes in the second half of the film and provides plenty of intrigue and suspense as Maxim reveals what really happened to his first wife and is subsequently suspected of her murder. Both his wife and the viewer are aware of his innocence, but with Rebecca's lover Jack Favell (George Sanders) accusing Mr. de Winter of murder, and plenty of damning evidence, things are looking pretty bad for the poor fellow. It all wraps up nicely in the end, of course, but there are plenty of tense moments along the way, all handled in the director's typically assured manner, with bags of atmosphere and sumptuous cinematography.

But as great as the direction and story are, it is the performances that really make Rebecca a winner: Olivier is perfect as the troubled toff, Anderson is wonderfully wicked as scheming housekeeper Danvers, nobody does 'bumbling oaf' quite as well as Nigel Bruce (playing Major Giles Lacy, who puts his foot in his mouth whenever he speaks), Sanders is suitably slimy as adulterous blackmailer Favell, and Fontaine... well, she is completely captivating, every smile, every tilt of her head, and every nervous glance guaranteed to win over the viewer (she was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role at the Oscars, but lost to Ginger Rogers). Hell, even the dog that played Maxim's mutt Jasper was excellent (so cute!).

This was Alfred Hitchcock's first American-made film. Quite frankly, I'm amazed at how well Hitchcock "got" what American audiences wanted in their suspense films, hitting them out of the park from the moment he began working in the US.

Apart from being a tad bit long, this is a well made film. I love the inside of Mandalay and Sir Laurence Olivier played a wonderful mysterious and sullen Maximillian De Winter opposite his new wife, a beautiful and naive young Joan Fontaine who is never even given a name here, probably deliberately and in keeping with how mousy and "second hand" she feels about herself in relation to the first and late Mrs. De Winter, who is actually Rebecca from the title.

Of course there is also George Sanders, playing the type of character he is best known for--sarcastic, snobby, self-assured, pompous, witty and verbose. He hits the nail on the head as Rebecca's "cousin" - so he calls himself. Of course the most eerie and unsettling character was Mrs. Danvers, Rebecca's housekeeper or "maid in waiting." Danvers takes great pains in sabotaging the second Mrs. De Winter's marital relationship with Max de Winter,--even going as far as calmly urging her to to plunge to her death into the water from Rebecca's bedroom window at Mandalay. There are a couple of twists in this movie, but I won't give them away. It's best if you watch them unfold yourself in true Hitchcockian style.

I will say that Rebecca, the first wife of Max de Winter, is NEVER seen, but we learn about her by what is said about her by the various characters, even going as far as seeing the untouched shrine of a bedroom maintained by Mrs. Danvers. But soon you learn that Rebecca was never the perfect wife Danvers and others make her out to be. The ending is a surprise in more way than one, and yet Mrs. Danvers gets the last word in her own way. A great movie by Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick.

"Rebecca" was the first Hitchcock film I ever saw, and I was mesmerized by it from the start, convinced that I had to see more of the director's work. It richly deserved the Oscar it received, but it's a real puzzle that the Academy saw fit to withhold a best director award for Hitch. Would one possibly give an award to a work by Picasso and not to Picasso himself?

"Rebecca" was the first of the director's American-made films, and it shows. It's quite different from his earlier British-made films, such as "Young and Innocent" and even "The Lady Vanishes," which somehow seem more amateurish by comparison. (I know little of the British cinema of that era, but it's difficult not to conclude that Hollywood was better at producing more sophisticated efforts.) I would even judge "Rebecca" the best of his films of the early 1940s, with the possible exception of "Shadow of a Doubt." It is true, of course, that much of this film has become cliché (remember the spoofs on the old "Carol Burnette Show"!), but it still weathers the decades very well. The acting is uniformly excellent. Olivier is the hardened Maxim de Winter, untitled lord of Manderly, trying to forget the past and given to unexpected bouts of anger and coldheartedness. Fontaine is perfect as the unnamed mousy heroine, innocent yet deeply in love, still carrying with her the aura of an awkward schoolgirl. Even character actor Nigel Bruce, best known for his role in the Sherlock Holmes films, makes an appearance and plays, in effect, Nigel Bruce!

But it is Judith Anderson's role as Mrs. Danvers that viewers are likely to remember best. Her presence is as dark and foreboding as that of the deceased Rebecca herself, and Fontaine is evidently cowed by her icy stare and unnervingly formal manner. The dynamics between the two actresses are wonderful. Who could fail to empathize with Fontaine's unenviable position as, in effect, the new employer of such an intimidating personage? On the other hand, Olivier seems quite unfearful of Anderson, despite her representing so much of the past he is trying to block out. This part of the plot (even in the book) never made much sense to me and is unconvincing.

As far as I know, this film marked Hitch's first collaboration with composer Franz Waxman, whose haunting score makes it all the more memorable. Waxman's scores are perhaps less obviously cinematic than those of the incomparable Bernard Herrmann, who would score Hitch's films from 1955 to 1966. Contrast the score for "Rebecca" to Herrmann's music for "Citizen Kane" the following year, and you'll immediately hear the difference. Waxman's is more symphonic in the central European style reflective of his own birth and upbringing. Yet it is worth recalling that scoring films was still a new art at this time, and both Waxman and Herrmann were pioneers.

Finally, one has to mention the cinematography, which is magnificent. Technically "Rebecca" might have been filmed in colour, which was newly available in 1940. ("Gone with the Wind" was filmed entirely in colour the previous year, while "The Wizzard of Oz" and "The Women" had colour scenes.) But colour would have diminished its impact. The suspense and the ominous sense of impending doom could only have been communicated through the medium of black-and-white and the deft use of light and shade which it affords.

In one respect, of course, "Rebecca" is not a typical Hitchcock film. There is no fleeing innocent trying to clear his name of a crime he did not commit. Surprisingly, there isn't even a murder, although its absence was apparently imposed by the Hayes Code and is certainly foreign to Daphne du Maurier's original novel. Some have said that there is more Selznick than Hitchcock in this film, and perhaps there's something to that. Still, if the collaborative effort between the two was not exactly amiable, it was nevertheless successful.

In short, this is the first in a string of Hitchcock masterpieces.

I spent the majority of this film thinking about how lucky M. Olivier really was. To be able to wrap his arms around Joan Fontaine and kiss her. Oh my. She's one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen (almost, but not quite as beautiful as Veronica Lake). She's also absolutely perfect in the role of the second Mrs. DeWinter, taking a character that could have become a cloying bore in less capable hands and transforming her into a sympathetic and interesting figure.

The movie, on the whole, is similarly amazing, capturing the spirit and the tone of those great Gothic romances. Watching Rebecca, I was reminded (pleasantly) of Wuthering Heights; I do not mean to suggest that in some way this film re-tells the tale of Cathy and Heathcliff, but rather that Rebecca has the feel of Bronte's novel (I am most certainly not talking about the William Wyler adaptation a few years before the release of Rebecca. That's a terrible film that somehow manages to mis-interpret the novel).

I must assume that the guiding hand of Hitchcock played no small role in recreating the feel of a Gothic romance. There are very few that would be able to take a love story, infuse it with such gloom, with such a sense of foreboding, and still manage to create something that ends happily without it feeling like a cop-out. I'd also like to draw everyone's attention to the incredibly moving section of the film that occurs between the arrival of the second Mrs. DeWinter at Mandalay and the masqued ball. The emotional strain on the Joan Fontaine character is so palpable, so absolutely taxing, that it actually pains me to watch. I hurt along with her. Few other movies affect me so emotionally - one of them is Vertigo.

All in all, this is a fantastic piece of film-making from Hollywood's golden age. Laurence Olivier is in top-form, as he plays the quiet, sad Maxim and George Sanders is positively hateful.

10/10 - a visceral masterpiece

The only Alfred Hitchcock (Oscar-nominated for directing) film to win the Best Picture Oscar, "Rebecca" is one of those typical films from the amazing director that chills, entertains and puts you on the edge of your seat each time you watch it. Joan Fontaine (Oscar-nominated) has just married the very wealthy Laurence Olivier (also Oscar-nominated), but she is haunted by his mysterious housekeeper (a show-stopping Oscar-nominated performance by Judith Anderson) and the memory of the film's titled character (Olivier's late wife). Hitchcock, noted for his subtle sexual under-tones in films spares none of that here as Anderson's character and the late titled character's relationship seemed to go much further than employee-employer. Anderson slowly tries to drive Fontaine to insanity and the end she may accomplish her devious goal. Hitchcock's first real major U.S. debut stunned the Academy and audiences alike and would lead to the coveted Best Picture Oscar. It is not the best film the legendary director ever worked on, but it is still an amazingly good production that works on many cinematic levels. 4.5 out of 5 stars.