| Hitchcock and Selznick both left their mark on Rebecca
Rebecca was Alfred Hitchcock's first American film and his second adaptation of a Daphne du Maurier novel after Jamaica Inn. Brought over from England by producer David O. Selznick, Hitchcock set about crafting a screenplay to suit his own tastes – any book, as far as Hitchcock was concerned, was simply a jumping-off point for his own interests and themes. Selznick quickly disabused him of that notion. Attracted by the lavish budgets of Hollywood and the opportunity to reach a wider American audience than any of his British pictures ever did, Hitchcock learned that the opportunity came with a few strings – those held tightly by a producer whose last picture was Gone With the Wind.
Selznick thought that Rebecca was a silly title for a film, but, as film critic Leonard Leff points out on the excellent commentary track on this new Criterion DVD, Selznick changed his tune when he saw how popular the book became. Acquiring the rights to the book for an astounding (at the time) $50,000, Selznick was determined to give the movie-going audience the book they loved. And that meant keeping Hitchcock in check. The result was more of a Selznick picture and less of what we think of as a Hitchcock film, but was nevertheless very successful, capturing multiple Oscar nominations and making its young actress, Joan Fontaine, a star.
It's the story of a mousy young girl played by Fontaine (in the credits, she is listed as only "I" – unnamed like the narrator in the book) who falls in love with the aristocratic Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier). After romance and a wedding on the Riviera, the couple journeys to Manderley, de Winter's huge, grim estate on the coast of England. Encountering hostile servants and the not-so-subtle feeling that she's not measuring up to de Winter's previous wife, Rebecca (who died under mysterious circumstances), "I" begins to feel that she made a mistake in coming to the estate. Both the never-seen Rebecca and the house itself become brooding characters, haunting poor Fontaine with a menace that magnifies as the film unwinds.
It's an extremely entertaining film and marks a unique, if not quite amicable, relationship between a strong producer and an innovative director. If Rebecca is ultimately more of a Selznick picture, it's because it's infused with his taste for high romance – for years afterwards, Hitchcock promoted his enthusiasm for the movie by conversationally gagging about it whenever the topic came up. He viewed it as a "woman's picture" and, like Gone With the Wind, adapted from a hackneyed novel for a female audience. Indeed, there are a number of parallels with Selznick's Gone with the Wind, including evocative orchestral scores and, as critic Andrew Sarris once said, "enough lush suffering to go around for everyone."
The sumptuous romance was nevertheless fluidly incorporated into the film with Hitchcock's pitch-perfect control of the suspense elements. From the beginning of its dream-like plunge into the remains of the Manderley estate – "I dreamt last night that I returned to Manderley" – to the finely wrought conclusions about what really happened to Rebecca, there's enough Hitchcockian elements in the film to counterbalance Selznick's gothic excesses. Hitchcock's signature forward tracking camera, nuanced handling of fear, guilt and suspicion, and a limpid style of direction (that makes 130 minutes seem shorter than it is), all make the picture a great experience.
As usual, the Criterion DVD of Rebecca has been a labour of love for the company. The transfer of the film to disc is excellent, and even the soundtrack has been restored and preserved from the original 35mm negative. In addition to the informative commentary by Leff, there are also excerpts from Hitchcock's conversations with François Truffaut, footage from the 1940 Academy Awards ceremony showing the cast and crew of the film, at least three hours worth of radio shows that have adapted Rebecca, and a comprehensive booklet with essays by Robin Wood and George Turner.
But perhaps the most interesting supplementary material are the screen tests Hitchcock and Selznick conducted to find the right actress to play the role of "I." Included are tests from Vivien Leigh (Olivier's love interest at the time), a 16-year-old Anne Baxter, Loretta Young, Margaret Sullavan and Fontaine. Some of them were obviously wrong for the part – Leigh, for instance, simply falls back into her theatrics from Gone With the Wind – but others, like Sullavan, would have been an interesting choice. Except that when Fontaine's test comes up, you realize what Hitchcock and Selznick gradually came to realize – that no one else could play the part but her. Her ability to shrink into a chair to avoid confrontation and the fearful look that she carries for most of the movie set the bar for gothic heroines in a movie that set the standard for gothic movies. |
