- Alfred Hitchcock's gothic thriller Rebecca starts off like any other version of the Cinderella story. A young woman, played by Joan Fontaine, finds herself working as the unhappy traveling companion to the domineering dowager Mrs. Van Hopper (Florence Bates). While on vacation in Monte Carlo, however, this young woman is swept off her feet by the handsome and wealthy -- get ready -- George Fortescue Maximilian de Winter (Laurence Olivier). Though the brooding de Winter is still distraught over his former wife's drowning, it isn't long before this young lovestruck woman becomes the second Mrs. de Winter, and the two return to his palatial English home, Manderley. Ordinarily, they'd go on to live happily after ever, but that's where this particular story deviates from the norm.
- The problem, you see, is that Manderley itself remains under the spell of the first Mrs. de Winter. Tales of the late Rebecca's beauty and charm still echo through the halls, and it appears as though half the estate is monogrammed with her emblematic R. The business manager Frank Crawley (Reginald Denny) describes Rebecca as "the most beautiful creature (he) ever saw," while Maxim's sister (Gladys Cooper) and her husband (Nigel Bruce) focus instead on the second Mrs. de Winter's shortcomings. The person most strongly enamored of the late governess, however, is the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson). Danvers fastidiously maintains Rebecca's room as a shrine, and the eccentric housekeeper never fails to mention how the second Mrs. de Winter pales in comparison to the first. "Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?" asks Danvers. The film certainly makes it feel that way.
- It isn't until the night of the costumed ball, however, that we finally learn exactly how Rebecca lived and died at Manderley. The evening gets off to a shocking start when, at Mrs. Danver's suggestion, Mrs. de Winter unwittingly dons the costume Rebecca wore on the night of her death. In the film's best scene, Danvers tries to take the homage even further, slyly attempting to coax the despondent young woman into throwing herself out the window ("It's easy, isn't it? Why don't you?"). It is then, however, that Rebecca herself makes a dramatic return to Manderley when her remains are uncovered during the search for survivors of a wrecked ship. Was it suicide or murder? What do Maxim and Rebecca's unctuous "cousin" Mr. Favell (George Sanders) know about that night? Unfortunately, the asking of these questions is much more interesting than the answering of them, which revolves around a rather anticlimactic investigation. Fortunately, the film's explosive finale more than compensates for any dull moments.
- If I had to pick my three favorite characters from this film, they would probably be Rebecca, Manderley, and Mrs. Danvers. You'll note that only one of these is a character in the usual sense. That's not to detract from the stars of the film; Fontaine and Olivier are both excellent, and I'm impressed that the latter can make lines like "I'm asking you to marry me, you little fool!" seem charming. Still, I'm more impressed with how well Rebecca uses its characters, seen and unseen, live and inanimate, to establish exactly the right mood. Visually, Manderley is haunted by looming shadows, floating motes of dust, and of course the spectral Mrs. Danvers, who appears to hover, rather than walk. Rebecca is there, too, in the form of silken clothing and embroidered pillowcases. It's no wonder that the second Mrs. de Winter still dreams about such a wonderfully phantasmagoric place.
- This was the only film of Hitchcock's that won the Best Picture Academy Award, and it's also his first American film.
- As is probably obvious from my review, the second Mrs. de Winter is not named.
- Mrs. Danvers certainly must have been the inspiration for Frau Blucher in Young Frankenstein.
- Apparently, Hitchcock walks past the phone booth near the film's end, but I didn't spot him.
