Rebecca (1940)

Rebecca (1940)

Analysis & Review form

9/25/2016

Describe your assessment/opinion for each category below Do NOT write generalized statements without examples from film or examples without statements clarifying them

1). Screenplay/Storyline:

A simple paid personal companion to a wealthy woman meets a millionaire in Monaco. They marry and she moves into his mansion. His prior wife had died in a boating accident. She was a glamorous wife with Pedigree, p and p. opposite of the new wife who is a young, modest unsophisticated orphan. The house oozes of Rebecca memories and monograms everywhere. The maid raves about the former Mrs. de Winter. There is a lot of tension about the previous perfectly pedigreed and glamorous Mrs. de Winter. The new one is opposite. A boat is discovered with the dead body of the first Mrs. de Winter. The court needs to decide if it is a suicide or murder. Mr. de Winter is innocent, but the evidence looks like he killed her. There is blackmail and suspense but finally Mr. de Winter is cleared. He rushes back to his bride and sees that his maid who was obsessed with his first wife has gone insane and burned down his mansion. His bride escaped and they find each other on the front lawn of the burning mansion.

2). Hitchcock‘s Direction/Style (use of editing/montage, composition of shots, camera angles)

In the opening sequence Maxim is on a precipice looking down using cutting in the camera (Spoto 83) when he looks down looks and can see his toes above with the water below, then at Rebecca and then down the precipice again.

Spoto (p.83) mentions a long shot of the mansion in the beginning was all done in one single take.

Spoto (p. 83) discusses the sitting arrangement in Monte Carlo. Mrs. Van Hopper and Maxim are in the central in the camera frame and Joan Fontaine’s character is squeezed off to the right almost off the side. This has a diminutive effect.

In the final cottage scene Maxim reveals the truth about Rebecca’s death. The camera pans as he talks about Rebecca approaching him as if her ghost is following him as he speaks. The camera gaze walks towards him as he describes Rebecca having done. It follows through to the opening of the door and focusing on the spot where she fell and died.

3). Performances and Characterization:

Joan Fontaine has a beautiful young and fresh innocent looking face with blondish hair and a very simple haircut. It makes her look uncomplicated and innocent. She also hunches over a lot and looks down at the ground. It’s as if she is still a girl and not a woman with posture. These were good touches physical touches that Joan did as an actress.

Laurence Olivier has a look that smacks of arrogance good person. His upper class accent and confident acting made him a good distinguished heir.

Ben has a great old sailor face. He carried off his part well with bulging his eyes and delivering the dialogue with a poor accent.

Nigel Bruce (from the old Sherlock Holmes movies) played a cheeky old gent who is naughty and says the wrong things. He had great timing with his quips. “Good thing she doesn’t sail.” He looks the part of old money and has a great deep aristocratic voice.

Beatrice his wife also has good timing with under handed put downs and delivers them well. “Of course anyone who looks at you could see you don’t give a hoot about how you look. Have you ever thought of doing something with your hair? Oh now you’ve made it look worse.”

Mrs. Danvers was one of the best cast. She had a mean and stoic face unflinching face. She was able to act like just as much of a snob as Beatrice. It was a nice touch that she did the same thing and scan her with her eyes up and down disapprovingly.

4). Cinematography:

There are some foreshadowing visual elements done that glimpse towards an unhappy future for the couple. After the marriage Maxim buys his bride flowers. Half are black and the other half are white. As they are drive up the path to the house, it ominously starts to rain torrents on them in an top down convertible. It keeps raining while she is getting to know the house.

The whole mansion has huge doors where the door knobs are at the height of her shoulders. It dwarfs the new Mrs. de Winters. As does Rebecca’s room which is three times a normal room in width and height. It dwarfs her symbolically.

The filming was done in a way where there is always a cut of Mrs. Danvers appearing in rooms. One doesn’t see her walk in, she just starts talking it is a terrifying, jarring effect (Truffaut p. 129-130).

Pinpoint spotlights are used on the faces of Joan Fontaine and Mrs. Danvers. It brings poignant emphasis on key moments. Especially when Mrs. Danvers crazed look is brightly highlighted at the end (Spoto p. 83).

In Truffaut, Hitchcock says that the house was one of the main characters. He makes it a character through the sweeping views of the outside and the beautiful interiors. It is large enough for her to get lost and not know about the existence of a morning room.

5). Film Score/Sound and/or Visual Effects:

The sea is so never sounds relaxing. It always has extremely loud with crashing abnormally high waves. The harsh and dangerous sounds make the sea sound like a vicious killer.

The mansion Manderlay and the path leading up to it are miniatures. The new Mrs. de Winter speaks eerily in a haunting voice as the camera scans the first views of the burned estate. It has a spooky effect that she is talking about the past of where she used to live.

This is first Hitchcock movie with a score throughout the movie. The music is very literal and punctuates all the dramatic points with dramatic score. This was due to Selznick forcing this style on Hitchcock (Spoto 83).

6). Hitchcockian Themes and Motifs:

The film is a psychological thriller which is one of the themes Hitchcock uses. The torture of the new Mrs. de Winter by Mrs. Danvers is all mental. The picture that she built of Rebecca was all built up in her mind. She was tortured psychologically.

In his earlier films, Hitchcock shows horrible trapped marriages. This is another trapped marriage where Mr. de Winter took the offer of a fake marriage and had a trapped horrible life with an adulterous wife.

There is a class differences theme. It is showed through the whole film as the new Mrs. de Winter is always wearing sweater sets instead of furs and jewels like Mrs. Von Hopper or Rebecca wears. The movie contrasts the innocent orphan girl with the spoiled and unpleasant wealthy women.

Maxim is an innocent man accused of the crime of murder when it was an accidental murder that he only disguised.

Similar to the movie Blackmail (1929), blackmail is used in the plot.

7). Influences evoked from or inspired (film/literature/art/political/social):

The book is inspired from the novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier. The genre is Gothic Romance. Someone is dead and they may be watching you (Spoto 84). It is like a gothic haunted Cinderella tale.

It is a mocking glimpse at how high society live when they must be so bored, bored, bored in Monte while they are staying in the best hotels in an exciting city. The only concern is that “I haven’t seen anyone worthwhile”. The brother-in-law cannot understand that she doesn’t ride horses. “We all ride horses” assuming that everyone is rich and has horses.

8). Overall impressions of film (positive/negative) and additional comments:

I didn’t like the demeaning behavior Maxim showed to his bride to be in the beginning of the film. He treated her like a child. “Eat your eggs!” “Don’t bite your nails!” “If you think I asked you hear out of pity, leave the car right now!”

It is also painful to see Rebecca have a half step toward happiness and then have it wiped away. A simple walk with her husband turns into a harsh yelling session. She creates a beautiful costume dress and it is the same one his ex-wife wore. One expects the worst to happen throughout the movie and even when she finds out that he loves her and not Rebecca, he may be going away to jail for murder.

I loved the use of monograms throughout the movie that were haunting reminders of Rebecca. Almost every room had R monograms; her dinner napkin, her handkerchief, her writing paper and all the items in the cottage. After dealing with this embossed memory of the past, it was a great scene when the new Mrs. de Winter finally tells Mrs. Danvers to remove the monogrammed stationary because, “I’m Mrs. de Winter now!”