Rebecca (1940)

In 1940, David O. Selznick was still basking in the enormous commercial and critical success of his Gone With the Wind. The producer's next project was nearly as successful, another box office sensation that would win Best Picture in addition to receiving ten other Oscar nominations.

Today, Rebecca is better known as the first American film by British director Alfred Hitchcock, who had earlier sent waves across the Atlantic with The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938).

Rebecca was the perfect vehicle for Selznick and Hitchcock to combine their talents. As demonstrated by Gone With the Wind, Selznick understood drama and romance. Hitchcock would soon be known as the master of suspense, mystery, and black comedy.

Rebecca provided all of these elements, and backed them up with an outstanding British cast. As with Wuthering Heights from the year before, Laurence Olivier played the prickly romantic male lead. Judith Anderson had the greatest role of her career, as a creepy, ice-blooded servant pathologically devoted to her former master. Florence Bates has a great time playing an obnoxious, bossy socialite. George Sanders was given a tailor-made role as a cynical villain. Nigel Bruce from the Sherlock Holmes series again played a good-natured but clueless blueblood. C. Aubrey Smith is once again a crusty magistrate. Gladys Cooper and Leo G. Carroll have lesser roles, but lend able support here.

Selznick repeated much of the formula behind Gone With the Wind. Like his previous blockbuster, Rebecca was an adaptation of a best-selling novel written by a woman, whose central character is a beautiful young woman who lives in a palatial mansion. Selznick generated much publicity with a talent search for the lead, again picking a lesser-known actress. Joan Fontaine, the sister of Olivia de Havilland, was previously best known as Cary Grant's love interest in Gunga Din (1939).

The story goes that Olivier had wanted his co-star to be Vivien Leigh, whom he would marry later that year. Olivier took his frustrations out on Fontaine, supposedly encouraged by the director. Hitchcock believed that Fontaine's frightened, insecure performance would be more true to life if she were intimidated. The experienced and proud English cast helped Hitchcock in his cause by disdaining the young Hollywood contract player.

Joan Fontaine would again play the frightened newlywed the next year in Hitchcock's Suspicion, for which she would win the Oscar for Best Actress. Her third great film role was in Jane Eyre (1944), a film similar to Rebecca in which her timid character is married above her class to a wealthy, temperamental man harboring a dark secret. All three of these films have been underrated because their stories unfold from a woman's point of view, and a rather submissive woman at that.

Rebecca is probably the best film from the long, successful career of Alfred Hitchcock. Its only serious competition comes from Strangers on a Train, doubtlessly preferred by most Hitchcock fans since he also produced that film, and it features a male protagonist. Rear Window, Suspicion and Psycho are also outstanding films, but not quite on the same level as Rebecca.

The presence of Selznick meant that the production values were of the highest quality. The film is lengthy, with the finale somewhat incredulous (Would Mrs. Danvers really destroy the property of Rebecca, which she had been maintaining like a museum shrine?) But the cast, sets, script, and Oscar-winning cinematography could hardly be improved. The opening shot of the dream-state journey to Manderley is a cinema classic.

Hitchock's film just prior to Rebecca had been another adaptation of a Du Maurier book, Jamaica Inn (1939). He would eventually make a third film based a Du Maurier story, The Birds (1963). (98/100)

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