REBECCA

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 7/3/14 at 8:39pm

I haven't seen it in years, and it seemed the perfect thing to watch this stormy evening.

I'd forgotten how good it is! But I keep wanting to pause it and watch Carol Burnett's version, which I suspect would ruin the whole experience.

Updated On: 7/3/14 at 08:39 PM

[James885]

Posted: 7/3/14 at 9:13pm

Carol Burnett's version is hilarious, although I think Vicki Lawrence steals the spotlight with her portrayal of 'Mrs. Danpers".

Honestly, Rebecca is one of my favorite Hitchcock films. One of my favorite moments is when Joan Fontaine's character calls Mrs. Danvers into the morning room and orders the housekeeper to remove all of Rebecca's items. When Danvers protests that 'these are Mrs. DeWinter's things', Fontaine fixes her with a steely look and declares that 'I am Mrs. DeWinter now!', while the music swells. It's such a great moment.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 7/3/14 at 9:23pm

Not there yet, but I'm looking forward to it!

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/3/14 at 9:52pm

Excellent movie. Love everyone in it. Joan Fontaine has the most difficult role and plays it beautifully.

I'm a sucker for George Sanders in anything, though, and he's so deliciously evil in this.

But Judith Anderson is sheer perfection. And I love the whole look of the movie. The lighting and art direction and cinematography are unforgettable.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 7/3/14 at 9:58pm

Yep, yep, and yep.

Anderson should be ridiculous, but she isn't. She's terrifying and, oddly, tragic.

[James885]

Posted: 7/3/14 at 10:27pm

I completely agree. You really can't help feeling sorry for Anderson's Danvers, despite how cruel she is to the second Mrs. DeWinter. The image at the end of her silhouetted against the flames consuming Rebecca's bedroom is one of the most memorable images in the film, in my opinion.

Updated On: 7/3/14 at 10:27 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 7/3/14 at 11:51pm

It's one of the--what?--20 best movies?

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 7/4/14 at 12:39am

Oh you guys shoulda seen Sleep No More in Boston when the noir material was more explicitly Rebecca-y. Although now a Mrs. Danvers type is King Duncan's handmaid. And the last time I saw it in New York my niece got a one on one that included the opening bit about not going back.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 7/4/14 at 2:23pm

This is one of the Hitchcocks that I'm increasingly ambivalent about. There's plenty to admire, of course -- the magnificent B/W cinematography, the art direction, the performances are all beyond reproach, and yet somehow I just never really connect with it. The new Mrs. DeWinter is so completely the victim that I just lose all patience with her after a certain point, and yeah I know that's the point of the story and the character's supposed to be easily dominated but that doesn't make me less understanding of exactly why she doesn't fire Mrs. Danvers immediately after the costume catastrophe -- my sympathy for underdogs has limits.

But yeah, that astonishing scene in Rebecca's bedroom is a marvel, radiantly beautiful and just relentlessly creepy. There's just nothing like it.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 7/5/14 at 6:33am

While I gather working under Selznick's producing was frustrating for Hitchcock--and it really is a Selznick picture as much as a Hitch one--it's a fave of mine too.

Did anyone watch the UK TV version shown on Masterpiece theatre maybe 10-15 years back with Diana Rigg as Danvers and Charles Dance? Not bad, all things considered (there was a 1970s UK TV version as well, which I've not seen.)

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 7/5/14 at 8:37am

Indeed, everyone's role is extraordinarily challenging and in lesser hands would have been botched. But they are all so damned good. Perhaps the best across the board casting ever.

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/5/14 at 11:31am

Roscoe, I have to say that when I first saw the movie, I felt exactly as you do. Maybe even to a greater degree. I was less forgiving of "I" and her inability to grow a backbone. The only way she finds any strength is in her love for Maxim. And she is "powerless" to that love, just like she's powerless to everything else. She thinks if he likes something, then her opinion is of no importance.

I seriously wanted to strangle her after the costume prank.

But as the years have gone on, I've actually grown in the opposite direction than you and become more forgiving of "I" and her weaknesses and her (one true) strength of love.

The problem with the story is that once she finds out that Maxim hated Rebecca and that they both want Danvers out of Manderley, it's too late for "I" to show that strength. They drive back toward the mansion only to find it engulfed in flames. It's already "game over," and they win.

I wish "I" would have had more of a chance in the plot to show her inner strength. She has the one brief scene where Maxim crumbles in her arms and she rises to the occasion and reassures him (rather forcefully) that they will get through this together.

Then they jump in the car and race off. Manderley burns. The end.

[trentsketch]

Posted: 7/5/14 at 11:32am

I never saw that Carol Burnett bit before. How wonderful.

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/5/14 at 11:35am

Carol Burnett - "Rebecky"

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 7/5/14 at 6:13pm

It's been much, much longer since I've read the novel, but I think a valid point could be made that du Maurier wanted to make a contemporary Gothic novel--and so the narrator/heroine being powerless is a BIG part of that tradition. She mentioned Ann Radcliffe and The Mysteries of Udolpho in a piece I read about her while doing a paper on the genre... That doesn't of course necessarily defend it--of course it could be argued that by making a modern version she could have updated that trope, but...

[sondheimboy2]

Posted: 7/5/14 at 10:01pm

Even though it does not follow the novel exactly, this is a film that needs no remake of any sort. I remember that television version that showed on either Masterpiece Theatre or Mystery back in the late '70s/early '80s that was totally pointless even with Diana Rigg as Mrs. Danvers. I don't remember who played I, but she was so wimpy that she made Joan Fontaine look like a bull-dyke in comparison.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 7/5/14 at 10:05pm

Full-force entertainment. I love it.

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/6/14 at 6:48am

You know who else I love in the movie is Florence Bates as Fontaine's battle-axe employer. She's delightfully hideous. Florence had great small roles in many films (like the Russian ballet instructor who drinks a little in "On the Town").

[Roscoe]

Posted: 7/6/14 at 8:38am

Absolutely agreed about Florence Bates -- that last appraising glance she gives "I" as she says with the utmost contempt, "Mrs. DeWinter! -- Goodbye my dear, and good luck!" She's also in ROPE, isn't she, playing a somewhat dimmer role as one of the party guests, she can't remember the name of the movie she just saw.

Points all taken, of course, about "I"'s lack of spirit -- one of the things I do like about the film is the way it becomes clear that everyone else in Manderley seems to like her very much, even Florence Cooper takes a shine to her. And part of the creepiness of that scene in Rebecca's bedroom is what I've always seen as something of an implied invitation for "I" to take Rebecca's place.

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/6/14 at 9:15am

re: Rope

I think you're thinking of Constance Collier, another favorite of mine (Stage Door, Damsel In Distress ...)

[Roscoe]

Posted: 7/6/14 at 9:23am

DOH -- yes, a quick imdb check confirms Constance Collier as Mrs. Atwater, the sweet dim lady who went to see somebody in something.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 7/6/14 at 9:37am

I love the very idea of Constance Collier.


In Stage Door:




As Viola in Twelfth Night:




In Rope:




And as Nancy, in Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's stage adaptatioon of Oliver Twist, which played New York at the New Amsterdam Theater:




Collier and Sir Herbert and Nancy and Fagin:

[trentsketch]

Posted: 7/6/14 at 1:18pm

Rebecca is absolutely a Gothic novel. The weak heroine is intentional because du Maurier did not want to update or subvert the tropes. She wrote a pure Gothic novel.

The narrator is almost always a weaker character in the genre so that the author can go to extreme emotional heights for fear and love and sorrow. A stronger character wouldn't respond so passionately to everything going wrong. It's the same reason why the survivor girl trope emerged in slasher films. Take someone who has never experienced anything terrible, does not have the perspective or knowledge to handle something terrible, and drag them through the most horrifying experience imaginable.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 7/6/14 at 2:05pm

Very well said Trent. I think, in my class essay, I said as much in 9000 words... :P (I actually used the slasher film as a modern example which my prof hated...) The main thing that sets apart the gothic from, say, 1800s sensational fiction, is the setting being foreign to the main character (who is almost always a woman.) I'm not a huge Jane Austen fan, but I love Northanger Abbey for how well it plays with the tropes.

[trentsketch]

Posted: 7/6/14 at 2:58pm

Northanger Abbey is my favorite Austen novel because it works so well as satire of the Gothic.