Rebecca

Alfred Hitchcock spins an arresting psychodramatic yarn

When a great book is adapted into a great film then, to me, it feels like a collaboration between the author and the director — often an unspoken collaboration. 1940’s Rebecca is such a film. Here we have a fantastically plotted and paced gothic story by one of the great writers of the twentieth century, Daphne du Maurier, transposed onto celluloid by one of the great filmmakers of that same century, Alfred Hitchcock. The director himself said, “It’s not a Hitchcock picture”, but Hitchcock had already adapted her novel Jamaica Inn, and later returned to one of her short stories with The Birds. I don’t often disagree with the great man but this time I must. Rebecca is the perfect novel for a Hitchcock film.

Though Hitchcock felt that Rebecca worked as a period piece — a film about class, gender, and domesticity during a certain time-period — like many of Hitchcock’s films, it works as both a mystery, a thriller, and ultimately, a work of psychological abstraction enclosed within an arresting narrative. Consider for a moment the setting of the film. Much of du Maurier’s work has a sense of nostalgia for the gothic tradition, no less due to her regular returns to the cold, windtorn crags of the Cornish coastline that she knew so well. Despite never actually revealing the exact location of the enigmatic and iconic Manderlay, it is clear that Hitchcock’s is imbuing his film with the same stormy sensibilities as du Maurier’s novel. Joan Fontaine’s Mrs de Winter is greeted by rain upon her arrival to Manderlay, and it takes her a while to become accustomed to the cold chill of its long corridors. Rebecca is the kind of film that could only be set in a place like Manderlay because Mrs de Winter’s alienation is stressed throughout: she feels every bit as isolated as the house that she inhabits. Hitchcock shoots his film as to dwarf Joan Fontaine in comparison to Manderlay’s grand halls and despite the legion of servant’s overzealous dedication to their service towards her, she feels completely alone: a woman out of place.

And the second Mrs de Winter is dwarfed in comparison to the stature of the wife who precedes her, the first Mrs de Winter, “the late Mrs de Winter”: Rebecca. Not only does the R that is sewn, it appears, onto every single pillow, handkerchief, and item of clothing that the late Mrs de Winter owned serve as a constant reminder of her, but just the mention of her name can send her husband Maxim de Winter (brilliantly played by Laurence Olivier) into a mood as stormy as the Cornish coastlines just down the way. Not only does Mrs de Winter have to step into the role of Rebecca, something that she can never live up to no matter how hard she tries — the fancy dress party scene is a particularly uncomfortable and embarrassing one to watch — but she has to adopt the role of the 1940s wife. For her whole life leading up to now she was a servant to Edythe Van Hopper, now that role has been reserved as she has been placed into a position of power. However, this role reversal is complicated. Her whirlwind romance and eventual marriage to Maxim has seemingly saved her from a life of work and servitude, but she still must adopt the job of the servile wife. Though he woos her with his charm and good looks, Maxim appears controlling from the outset. If he treats her like a child then she consistently seems like one, and because of this, not only does she struggle to fulfil her duties as the wife of a manor house, but as the ‘replacement’ for Rebecca.