In REBECCA (1941), Alfred Hitchcock tells a Gothic ghost story… without any ghosts
#31DaysOfHorror: October 31
This October, I watched and reviewed 31 horror movies in 31 days! You can see the full list of all 31 films here.
Happy Halloween! I’ve finally reached the end of my #31DaysOfHorror project, during which I’ve watched and reviewed one horror movie each day for all of October. It’s been a fun month; I’ve rewatched some old favorites and discovered new ones, explored some franchises in depth and dipped my toes in the unfamiliar waters of others, and written about what little I could find to be interested in while watching some truly awful films. I met Tab Hunter the day I reviewed Sweet Kill. Director Chris Peckover told me he “loooooooved” my deep dive into his instant-classic Better Watch Out, and Jennifer Tilly (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) linked to my review of the super-sleek, stylishly-fun Cult of Chucky.
So, all in all, it’s been a great month to be a horror fan. To close out #31DaysOfHorror, I decided to check out the new Criterion Collection release of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1940 gothic ghost-less ghost story Rebecca, a favorite since I first watched it years ago.
“Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” So begins the opening narration of Hitchcock’s Rebecca, adapted from the Daphne du Maurier novel of the same name; this is one of the greatest opening lines in all of literature (and film), as far as I’m concerned. The unseen narrator continues: “It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me.” It’s an opening that immediately establishes the tone of the film; as Hitchcock’s camera guides us up the path to the grand, Gothic ruin of Manderley, we are at once wistful and intrigued, already aware the that the film is grappling with a strange sort of nostalgia for a past that is gone and can never be regained.
This is a story told in doubles. There are two Mrs. de Winters, one living and one dead, one good and one… well, one dead. An absent presence and a present absence. It is the story of a Manderley harshly divided into East and West; the East Wing is open and full of life, and the West Wing, closed and frozen in time, preserving the memories of the dead entombed within. And it is the story of two other Manderleys, separated across time, the one we are watching bustle with life in flashback and the future-one we know has been destroyed and is able to be visited only in dreams.
The second Mrs. de Winter is famously never given any other name. She is not allowed an identity aside from her relationship with her husband, the fabulously named Maxim de Winter, and her relationship to her husband’s late wife, Rebecca de Winter. Instead, she is scrutinized and observed, criticized both casually and cruelly, for her failure to live up to everyone’s beloved Rebecca.
Also famously, we never actually see Rebecca. There are no portraits of her lining the halls of Manderley, no photographs sitting atop the splendid desks and shelves. She is present only in her absence, in the way the other characters still speak of her reverently, still manage the house the way she would have wanted. The emotional climax of the film, where Maxim confesses to the second Mrs. de Winter what happened on the bitterly sad night of Rebecca’s death, is shot such that we almost feel we are watching a flashback.
The camera pans the room as Maxim describes their confrontation that night, and even though we don’t see her, we feel we are watching Rebecca stalk the room as he outlines her movements. “She got up…” he says, and the camera tilts upward, “…and started to walk toward me.” So too does the camera, although she is not there. We can feel the past reverberating through the image, just as it echoes through the halls of Manderley, straining to break through to the visible, but the movie resists Rebecca’s intrusion into the present, as does the second Mrs. de Winter.
Chief among critics of the second Mrs. de Winter is the frightening Mrs. Danvers, the head of housekeeping, portrayed in a chilling Academy Award-nominated performance by Judith Anderson. It is clear that she was in love with Rebecca, and she despises Maxim’s new wife for trying to take the place of her former mistress. She preserves Rebecca’s room so that she can sit among her things, rubbing her cheek with Rebecca’s furs and marveling at the fact that her negligee is see-through. Later, like a demoness whispering in the ear of the second Mrs. de Winter, Mrs. Danvers tries to convince her to leap from an open window to her death. It’s melodramatic and over-the-top and horrific in the classic sense of the word, inspiring a deep, deep dread.
The Criterion Collection BluRay presentation of the film is gorgeous. It’s worth the price for the new 4K restoration alone, but the set comes packed with extras, including several documentaries about the film and three radio versions of the story, including the famous one done by Orson Welles. I haven’t had time to explore all of the extras yet — I wanted to get this review up before November — but I read the booklet, which includes a fantastic essay by film scholar David Thomson as well as excerpted memos between producer David O. Selznick and Alfred Hitchcock.
The memos are particularly interesting. Hitchcock seems to be straining at the limits placed on him during this, his first Hollywood production; he suggests numerous changes to the original novel, including, reluctantly, having a flashback where we get to see Rebecca. There is a lengthy memo from Selznick to Hitchcock where the former tears into the initial treatment of the film by the latter, furious that Hitchcock has altered so much from du Maurier’s original story. It’s a fascinating read. One comes to understand why Selznick advertised his films as “picturizations” rather than “adaptations;” he believed the duty of filmmakers was a process of translating words to images as faithfully as possible, so as not to anger fans of the book, and any derivation from that process was a dereliction of duty.
And… in this situation, anyway, he’s completely right. We tend to think of Hitchcock as the uber-auteur, if I may mix etymologies, an artist of the highest caliber who controlled every aspect of his pictures; the documents included in this BluRay presentation complicate that idea by showing what happened when Hitchcock clashed with Selznick, the embodiment of producer-as-auteur. A lot of the changes Hitch had initially suggested are just bad, for exactly the reasons Selznick outlines. For example, Hitch had wanted the main character to be given the name Daphne, and for it to be Maxim who confronts her in Rebecca’s bedroom rather than Mrs. Danvers. Of course she should remain nameless, like in the book, and of course it must be Mrs. Danvers — who The Guardian called “a haunted house in human form” — who should surprise her in the west wing. Hitch’s changes seem to miss the whole point of the story — that it’s a ghost story without the ghosts, about the complete erasure of the present in favor of wallowing in the past.
Regardless of who, exactly, is responsible for the final film, it’s a stunning achievement in everything from acting, to production design, to camerawork, to costuming. It’s a great film to close out #31DaysOfHorror 2017. The second Mrs. de Winter may never be able to go back to Manderley again, but at least, time and time again, we can return to Rebecca.
