Deborah Lipp

Rebecca (1940) 10/10
A nervous young woman (Joan Fontaine) meets and marries well-known and wealthy Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier). As”the second Mrs. de Winter” at Manderley, she finds the memories of her husband’s first wife, Rebecca, omnipresent and intimidating. Most disturbing is the strange housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), who seems obsessed with Rebecca. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Rebecca is an exquisite mood piece, and does a remarkable job of keeping the viewer riveted for more than two hours. I had the pleasure of re-watching it this week with two teens who’d never seen it before. I first saw Rebecca in a high school film class (it took three days). Even knowing how thrilled and fascinated we all were in class back then, I was still wondering if these teens would really like it. I was suddenly conscious of the slowness of some of the pacing, of how little actually happens, and I was painfully aware that teens today get a lot more stimulation and are accustomed to a lot more visual movement. I am pleased to report that they both loved it.

The movie is masterful at establishing presence and creating images in the mind’s eye. I am captivated by all the half-women in this film. The second Mrs. de Winter, who is never named, Rebecca, who is never seen, Mrs. Danvers, who is deranged. It would be easy to dismiss all this as Hitchcockian misogyny, but that would be a mistake. True, women don’t fare well in this film, as you’d expect from Hitchcock, they are too meek or too bold, and their sexuality is either perverse or comical. But this is a movie all about women, about their energy and their need for place, about their longings and their sins. The men (Olivier, George Sanders as Rebecca’s cousin, Nigel Bruce as de Winter’s brother-in-law) are there merely as foils for the women to engage in perversion or self-discovery.

(Spoilers below the fold)
It is lovely that Rebecca’s nature is left a mystery. In the end, we are told only that she had done “inhuman” things, things Maxim could never repeat. Was she merely a slut? Seems so small for such a strong statement? Was she bisexual? Shocking and scandalous for the time, and supported by Mrs. Danvers obsessive fondling of her underthings. Or was there more? By the end we know she was having an affair with a cousin, so we can add incest, and that she threatened a pathetic old man in order to control him. I do like to think that torturing small animals was also on the list. At heart, she is the viewer’s imagination about devouring and evil womanhood. Meanwhile, the second Mrs. de Winter is not anyone’s idea of ideal womanhood; not, that is, until after she becomes strong and self-possessed. The meekness and diffidence is not what the story asks of a woman, and having seen no models of what might be asked, she must find her own way. In the end, we believe she will.