#80: REBECCA (1940)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

7

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Never, and I knew nothing about the plot

BEST SEQUENCE

The scene in the beachside cottage between Maxim and the second Mrs. de Winter when they have a frank discussion about Rebecca

BEST LINE

"What was Rebecca really like?"

"I suppose she was the most beautiful creature I ever saw"

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

99%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"Hitchcock's first American film (and his only Best Picture winner), Rebecca is a masterpiece of haunting atmosphere, Gothic thrills, and gripping suspense."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"A self-conscious woman juggles adjusting to her new role as an aristocrat's wife and avoiding being intimidated by his first wife's spectral presence."

THOUGHTS

• As has happened a few times now, the full movie is available on Youtube. It's quite good, I definitely recommend it, so you might want to watch it before reading this review (although I won't spoil anything). Here's the link
• The main character is not Rebecca. Rebecca was the first wife of the aristocratic Maxim de Winter. The main character, instead, is Maxim's second wife, and her name is never even provided to us. This lines up perfectly with the main thrust of the movie - the second Mrs. de Winter fears that she can never hope to live up to the glamorous and beautiful Rebecca, whose presence lingers throughout Manderley, the mansion where they live
• But despite the IMDB synopsis above, there's nothing supernatural about this movie - Rebecca's belongings remain in the mansion, and the memories of her remain firm in peoples' minds, but this isn't a ghost story. It does have the trappings of one, though. I kept wondering if something more otherworldly was about to occur
• It's a bit of a slow burn, but an effective one, and things really pick up towards the end
• Laurence Olivier played Maxim in this, and he's quite good. Charismatic yet aloof, and really kind of a jerk. He proposes to the second Mrs. de Winter by saying, "I'm asking you to marry me, you little fool." Olivier will appear in a couple more movies on this list, Spartacus and Marathon Man, and maybe others that I'm not aware of
• This is a bit of a milestone movie for us, as it's the first appearance of Alfred Hitchcock, the most represented director on the AFI list. Including Rebecca, the list has nine of his movies. It's a good Hitchcock movie, just not as thrilling as some of his others, so I have no problem with this placement
• Based on the novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I never read the book and I didn't know anything about the plot, so I was happy to be surprised by the movie. Another interesting connection between Hitchcock and du Maurier, she wrote a short story called The Birds, which Hitchcock loosely adapted into the movie of the same name. The AFI holds The Birds in high regard, placing it at #7. Hot take alert, I only saw The Birds once, and I don't remember thinking much of it
• Finally, Netflix released a remake of this story in 2020. I didn't see it, but it seems like the general consensus was that it wasn't great and didn't have much reason for being since the 1940 version already existed. Especially since it's so easy to watch on Youtube, whether you saw the Netflix movie or not, give this one a try!

Up next: The Magnificent Seven from 1960, the first Western movie on the list