Rebecca (1940 film)

In Monte Carlo, Max de Winter (Laurence Olivier) stops to speak to Mrs. Edythe Van Hopper (Florence Bates) only after recognizing her companion (Joan Fontaine), the girl he had encountered earlier.

An inexperienced young woman (Joan Fontaine) meets aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) at the French Riviera and soon becomes the second Mrs. de Winter.

Maxim takes his new bride back to Manderley, his grand mansion by the sea in south-western England, dominated by its housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), a chilly individual who had been a close confidante of the first Mrs. De Winter—Rebecca—with whom she is clearly still obsessed. She has even preserved Rebecca's grand bedroom suite unchanged and continues to display various items that carry her monogram.

Eventually, her constant reminders of Rebecca's glamour and sophistication convince the new Mrs. de Winter that Maxim is still in love with his first wife, which could explain his irrational outbursts of anger. She tries to please her husband by holding a costume party like he and Rebecca used to. Danvers advises her to copy the dress that one of Maxim's ancestors is seen wearing in a portrait. Nevertheless, when she appears in the costume, Maxim is appalled since Rebecca had worn an identical dress at her last ball, just before her death.

Mrs. de Winter confronts Danvers about this but Danvers tells her she can never take Rebecca's place and almost persuades her to jump to her death. At that moment, however the alarm is raised because a sunken boat has been found with Rebecca's body in it.

Maxim now confesses to his new wife that his first marriage had been a sham from the start when Rebecca had declared that she had no intention of keeping to her vows but would just pretend to be the perfect wife and hostess for the sake of appearances. When she claimed she was pregnant by another man, she taunted Maxim that the estate might pass to someone other than Maxim's line. During a heated argument, she fell, struck her head and died. To conceal the truth, Maxim took the body out in a boat, which he then scuttled and identified another body as Rebecca's.

The sudden crisis causes the second Mrs. de Winter to shed her naïve ways as they both plan how to prove Maxim's innocence. When the police claim the possibility of suicide, Rebecca's lover Jack Favell attempts to blackmail Maxim by threatening to reveal that she had never been suicidal. When Maxim goes to the police, they suspect him of murder. However, further investigation reveals that she was not pregnant but terminally ill due to cancer, so the suicide verdict stands. Maxim realizes that Rebecca had been trying to goad him into killing her via indirect suicide, so that Maxim would be ruined.

A free man, Maxim returns home to see Manderley on fire, set ablaze by the deranged Mrs. Danvers. All escape except Danvers, when the ceiling collapses on her. The film ends with an R-monogrammed nightdress-case consumed by flames.

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

Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, stars of the film.

At Selznick's insistence, the film faithfully adapts the plot of du Maurier's novel Rebecca.[2] However, at least one plot detail was altered to comply with the Hollywood Production Code, which said that the murder of a spouse had to be punished.[2] In the novel, Maxim shoots Rebecca, while in the film, he only thinks of killing her as she taunted him into believing that she was pregnant with another man's child, and her subsequent death is accidental. However, Rebecca was not pregnant but had incurable cancer and had a motive to commit suicide, that of punishing Maxim from beyond the grave. Therefore, her death is declared a suicide, not murder.

Hitchcock later said that Selznick wanted the smoke from the burning Manderley to spell out a huge "R", which Hitchcock thought 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 edited the film "in camera" (shooting only what he wanted to see in the final film) to restrict the producer's power to re-edit the picture.[3] But Selznick relished the post-production process; he personally edited the footage, laid in Franz Waxman's score, and supervised retakes and extensive re-recording of the dialogue of Sanders, Bates and Fontaine. Rewrites and reshooting were called for after a rough cut was previewed on December 26, 1939.[4]

Although Selznick insisted that the film be faithful to the novel, Hitchcock did make some other changes, though not as many as he had made in a previously 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. In the film, Mrs. Danvers is a much younger character (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.

The Breen Office, Hollywood's censorship board, specifically prohibited any outright hint of a lesbian infatuation or relationship between Mrs. Danvers and Rebecca,[5]^:70 though the film clearly does dwell on Danvers' obsessive memories of her late mistress.

The Hollywood Reporter reported in 1944 that Edwina Levin MacDonald sued Selznick, Daphne du Maurier, United Artists and Doubleday for plagiarism. MacDonald claimed that the film Rebecca was stolen from her novel Blind Windows, and sought an undisclosed amount of accounting and damages.[6] The complaint was dismissed on January 14, 1948[7] and the judgment can be read online.[8]

Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times called it "an altogether brilliant film, haunting, suspenseful, handsome and handsomely played."[9] Variety called it "an artistic success" but warned it was "too tragic and deeply psychological to hit the fancy of wide audience appeal."[10] Film Daily wrote: "Here is a picture that has the mark of quality in every department - production, direction, acting, writing and photography - and should have special appeal to femme fans. It creates a new star in Joan Fontaine, who does fine work in a difficult role, while Laurence Olivier is splendid."[11] Harrison's Reports declared: "A powerful psychological drama for adults. David O. Selznick has given it a superb production, and Alfred Hitchcock has again displayed his directorial skill in building up situations that thrill and hold the spectator in tense suspense."[12] John Mosher of The New Yorker wrote that Hitchcock "labored hard to capture every tragic or ominous nuance, and presents a romance which is, I think, even more stirring than the novel."[13]

The film currently holds a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 54 reviews, with a weighted average of 8.83/10. The site's consensus describes it as "a masterpiece of haunting atmosphere, Gothic thrills, and gripping suspense".[14] Rebecca won the Film Daily year-end poll of 546 critics nationwide naming the best films of 1940.[15]

Rebecca was the opening film at the 1st Berlin International Film Festival in 1951.[16] In 2018, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."[17] A restored nitrate print of Rebecca was shown at the Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood in 2019. The screening was introduced by Christopher Nolan.[18]

Rebecca won two Academy Awards and was nominated for nine more:[22] It is the only film since 1936 (when awards for actors in supporting roles were first introduced) that, despite winning Best Picture, received no Academy Award for acting, directing or writing.

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

• A Sucessora
• List of films with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a film review aggregator website
• Gothic film – Notable films
• Gothic romance film

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Rebecca (film)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rebecca (film).

• Rebecca at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Rebecca on IMDb
• Rebecca at the TCM Movie Database
• Rebecca at AllMovie
• Rebecca at Rotten Tomatoes
• Rebecca: The Two Mrs. de Winters an essay by Robin Wood at the Criterion Collection

Streaming audio

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