Rebecca (1940) REVISIT

Rebecca is a ghost story, sort of. It is the story of a woman whose name is never revealed to us except as she is the second Mrs. De Winter. She is surrounded by people who do not think she is important and, once married, is constantly reminded of the titular Rebecca, the first Mrs. De Winter, whose presence is everywhere. It is about real life ghosts, the kind that haunt us and get in the way of us living our lives. In this case our heroine is only ever allowed to be the second of her name. 

The first act is a romance, the unnamed heroine is swept off her feet by a handsome rich stranger. The scenes are romantic although they feel a bit dated in the way modern audiences understand romance. Still it fits with what we are going to see later, as a woman who never gets to be more than her husband's wife. We are brought into her joy as we see her being mistreated and her journey becomes ours for a reason. The first act is all setting us up for the next chapter, where her world comes crashing down around her due to how no one is able to let the dead Rebecca stay in the past. Fontaine's character is idealized; sweet, pretty, and kind. We are to both sympathize and empathize with her as well as struggle with her against the memories of the past. These attributes are what makes us feel the way we do about her. The whole film is about putting us on her side, we are being conditioned to care about certain people instead of others. 

I was first introduced to this film through reading I had done on queer coding in Hollywood's golden age. This is perhaps the classic example with the "villain," Mrs. Danvers, being presented as lesbian in the eyes of audiences of the age. Hitchcock commonly used queer coding in his films, often in ways that were subversive, not just to pit his audience against certain characters. But here it is the classic use which is portrayed. Danvers is cruel due to her love of the previous Mrs. De Winter, and her end isn't presented as tragic, it's what she deserves, because we are on the side of the sweet and charming new Mrs.  

But as I rewatched this film with a more 21st century eye, I began to see how today's audiences are prepared to watch these stories differently. This is the story of a woman who finds out her new husband played a hand in the death of his first wife from an unhappy marriage, attempted to cover it up, and then she makes a conscious decision to help him "get a way with it." The audiences of the time would have seen all of this as just based on their values of the day but today it is hard not to see this as confounding. We have to question who really has acted badly, and whose actions were justified or not. Perhaps today we might view this story with different eyes, different understandings. And perhaps as Manderlay burns down we are wonder what justice has been served? 

The film remains outstandingly beautiful and Hitchcock slowly builds the tension in a delicious manner, transitioning from the romance of the beginning into the growing claustrophobic energy of the second half. The only film of his to win the Best Picture Oscar and often cited as one of his best films, I think the film's story is fascinating for the way it needs some re-examining.The visual and narrative elements have held up incredibly but the story at its centre is one that leaves me feeling chilled. Watching a story designed to illicit certain emotions only to have a very different reaction, different sympathies, is a fascinating experience and in that the journey of the film remains a powerful one. Perhaps it is time to reevaluate Rebecca as something of darker tale that it may have even been originally intended. 

Rebecca

Starring: Lawrence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson, George Sanders

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Writers: Robert E Sherwood, Joan Harrison, Philip MacDonald, Michael Hogan