Rebecca (1940 film)

Rebecca
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Alfred Hitchcock
Produced by	David O. Selznick
Screenplay by	Philip MacDonald Michael Hogan
Story by	Joan Harrison Robert E. Sherwood
Based on	Rebecca  by Daphne du Maurier
Narrated by	Joan Fontaine
Starring	Laurence Olivier Joan Fontaine Judith Anderson
Music by	Franz Waxman
Cinematography	George Barnes
Editing by	W. Donn Hayes
Studio	Selznick International Pictures
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	April 12, 1940 (1940-04-12) (USA)
Running time	130 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1,288,000
Box office	$6,000,000

Rebecca is a 1940 American psychological dramatic thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock as his first American project, and his first film produced under his contract with David O. Selznick. The film's screenplay was an adaptation by Joan Harrison and Robert E. Sherwood from Philip MacDonald's and Michael Hogan's adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel of the same name, and was produced by Selznick. It stars Laurence Olivier as the aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter, Joan Fontaine as his second wife, and Judith Anderson as the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers.

The film is a gothic tale about the lingering memory of the title character, Maxim de Winter's dead first wife, which continues to haunt Maxim, his new bride, and Mrs. Danvers. The film won two Academy Awards, including Best Picture, out of a total 11 nominations. Olivier, Fontaine and Anderson were all Oscar nominated for their respective roles. Since the introduction of awards for actors in supporting roles, this is the only film named Best Picture that won no other Academy Award for acting, directing or writing.

Rebecca was the opening film at the 1st Berlin International Film Festival in 1951.

Plot

The film begins with a female voiceover: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again", to images of a ruined country manor.

The heroine is a very young (and nameless) woman (Joan Fontaine), a paid companion to the wealthy but obnoxious Edythe Van Hopper (Florence Bates). The heroine meets the aristocratic widower Maximilian (Maxim) de Winter (Laurence Olivier) in Monte Carlo. They fall in love, and within two weeks they are married.

Maxim takes his new bride to Manderley, his country house in Cornwall, England. The housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), is domineering and cold, and is obsessed with the great beauty, intelligence and sophistication of the first Mrs. de Winter—the eponymous Rebecca—and preserves her former bedroom as a shrine. Rebecca's sleazy cousin Jack Favell (George Sanders) appears at the house when Maxim is away.

The new Mrs. de Winter is intimidated by her responsibilities and begins to doubt her relationship with her husband. The continuous reminders of Rebecca overwhelm her; she believes that Maxim is still deeply in love with Rebecca. She also discovers that her husband sometimes becomes very angry at her for apparently innocent actions.

Mrs. Danvers tries to persuade Mrs. de Winter to leap to her death

Trying to be the perfect wife, the young Mrs. de Winter convinces Maxim to hold a costume party as he did with Rebecca. The heroine tries to plan her own costume, but Mrs. Danvers suggests she copy the beautiful outfit in the portrait of Caroline de Winter, an ancestor. At the party, when the costume is revealed to Maxim he is appalled; Rebecca wore the same outfit at their ball a year ago, shortly before she died. The heroine confronts Danvers, who tells her she can never take Rebecca's place, and almost manages to convince her to jump to her death. A sudden commotion reveals that a ship is sinking.

The heroine rushes outside, where she hears that during the rescue a sunken boat has been found with Rebecca's body in it. Maxim admits that he had earlier misidentified another body as Rebecca's, in order to conceal the truth. At the very beginning of their marriage Rebecca had told Maxim she intended to continue the promiscuous and perverse sex life she had led before the marriage. He hated her but they agreed to an arrangement: she would act as the perfect wife and hostess in public, and he would ignore Rebecca's privately conducted affairs. Rebecca grew careless and complacent in her dealings, including an ongoing affair with her cousin Jack Favell. One night, Rebecca informed Maxim that she was pregnant with Favell's child. During the ensuing heated argument he hit her, she fell, hit her head and died. Maxim took the body out in a boat which he then scuttled.

Shedding the remnants of her girlish innocence, Maxim's wife coaches her husband on how to conceal the mode of Rebecca's death from the authorities. In the police investigation, deliberate damage to the boat points to suicide. Favell shows Maxim a note from Rebecca which seems to indicate she was not suicidal. Favell then tries to blackmail Maxim, but he tells the police. Maxim is now under suspicion of murder. The investigation then focuses on Rebecca's secret visit to a London doctor (Leo G. Carroll), which Favell assumes was due to her illicit pregnancy. However, the coroner's interview with the doctor reveals that Rebecca was mistaken in believing herself pregnant; instead she had a late-stage cancer.

The doctor's evidence persuades the coroner to render a finding of suicide. Only Frank Crawley (Maxim's best friend and manager of the estate), Maxim, and his wife will know the full story: that Rebecca lied to Maxim about being pregnant with another man's child in order to goad him into killing her, an indirect means of suicide.

As Maxim returns home from London to Manderley, he finds the manor on fire, set alight by the deranged Mrs. Danvers. The second Mrs. de Winter and the staff manage to escape the blaze, but Danvers dies in the flames.

Adaptation

At Selznick's insistence, the film adapts the plot of du Maurier's novel Rebecca faithfully. However, one plot detail was altered to comply with the Hollywood Production Code, which said that the murder of a spouse had to be punished. In the novel, Maxim shoots Rebecca, while in the film, he only thinks of killing her after she taunts him, whereupon she suddenly falls back, hits her head on a heavy piece of ship's tackle, and dies from her head injuries, so that her death is an accident, not murder.

According to the book It's only a Movie, Selznick wanted the smoke from the burning Manderley to spell out a huge "R". Hitchcock thought the touch lacked subtlety. While Selznick was preoccupied by Gone with the Wind (1939), Hitchcock was able to replace the smoky "R" with the burning of a monogrammed négligée case lying atop a bed pillow. Hitchcock also edited the picture in camera—shooting only what he wanted to see in the final film—a method of filmmaking that did not allow Selznick to reedit the picture.

Although Selznick insisted that the film be faithful to the novel, Hitchcock did make some other changes, especially with the character of Mrs. Danvers, though not as many as he had made in a previous rejected screenplay, in which he altered virtually the entire story. In the novel, Mrs. Danvers is something of a jealous mother figure, and her past is mentioned in the book. But in the film, Mrs. Danvers is a much younger character (the actress, Judith Anderson, would have been about 42 at the time of shooting) and her past is not revealed at all. The only thing we know about her is that she came to Manderley when Rebecca was a bride. Hitchcock made her more of a mysterious figure with subtly lesbian overtones, overtones which match well with du Maurier's own bisexuality.

Cast

• Laurence Olivier as Maxim de Winter
• Joan Fontaine as The Second Mrs. de Winter
• George Sanders as Jack Favell
• Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers
• Nigel Bruce as Major Giles Lacy
• Reginald Denny as Frank Crawley
• C. Aubrey Smith as Colonel Julyan
• Gladys Cooper as Beatrice Lacy
• Florence Bates as Mrs. Edythe Van Hopper
• Melville Cooper as Coroner
• Leo G. Carroll as Dr. Baker
• Leonard Carey as Ben
• Lumsden Hare as Tabbs
• Edward Fielding as Frith
• Forrester Harvey as Chalcroft
• Leyland Hodgson as Mullen
• Mary Williams as The Head Maid
• Keira Tate as The Parlour Maid
• Rose Trace as The Parlour Maid
• Sandra Phillip as The Parlour Maid
• Kelly Sanderton as The Parlour Maid
• Herietta Bodvon as The Housemaid

Hitchcock's cameo appearance, a signature feature of his films, takes place near the end; he is seen, back turned to the audience, outside a phone box when Jack is making a call.

Awards

1940 Academy Awards wins

• Best Picture – Selznick International Pictures – David O. Selznick
• Best Cinematography, Black and White – George Barnes

1940 Academy Award nominations

• Best Actor in a Leading Role – Laurence Olivier
• Best Actress in a Leading Role – Joan Fontaine
• Best Actress in a Supporting Role – Judith Anderson
• Best Director – Alfred Hitchcock
• Art Direction, Black and White – Lyle R. Wheeler
• Special Effects – Jack Cosgrove and Arthur Johns
• Best Film Editing – Hal C. Kern
• Best Music, Original Score – Franz Waxman
• Best Writing, Screenplay – Robert E. Sherwood and Joan Harrison

Rebecca was twice honored by the AFI in their AFI 100 Years... series

• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills – #80
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains – Mrs. Danvers, #31 Villain

Adaptations in other media

Rebecca was adapted as a radio play on numerous occasions, including May 31, 1943, as an episode of The Screen Guild Theater starring Joan Fontaine, Brian Aherne and Agnes Moorehead; again on The Screen Guild Theater on November 18, 1948, with Loretta Young, John Lund and Agnes Moorehead; on Lux Radio Theater's February 3, 1941, broadcast with Ronald Colman and Ida Lupino; and again on Lux November 6, 1950, with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. The Campbell Playhouse also aired an adaptation on December 9, 1938.

Rebecca has been remade by Bollywood twice. The first remake was Kohra (1964), starring Waheeda Rehman and Biswajit Chatterjee; and the second was the Anamika (2008), starring Dino Morea, Minissha Lamba and Koena Mitra.

The story has also been adapted as two different miniseries, both shown on PBS.

There was also a 1962 television adaptation on NBC, starring James Mason as Maxim, Joan Hackett as the second Mrs. De Winter, and Nina Foch as Mrs. Danvers.

Rebecca was used as the basis of a sketch on BBC comedy sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Look.

See also

A Sucessora

External links

• Rebecca at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Rebecca at AllRovi
• Rebecca at Rotten Tomatoes
• Rebecca at the Internet Movie Database
• Rebecca at the TCM Movie Database
• Criterion Collection essay by Robin Wood
• Rebecca Eyegate Gallery
• Rebecca trivia

Streaming audio

• Rebecca on Screen Guild Theater: May 31, 1943
• Rebecca on Lux Radio Theater: November 6, 1950