She Treads Softly: Rebecca

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Rebecca

1940
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Judith Anderson
Producer: David O. Selznick

My Friend Amy's The Summer of Hitchcock

Rebecca, Hitchcock's first American film, is based on a novel by Daphne du Maurier. It was an Academy Award winner for Best Picture and Cinematography (George Barnes). Although described as a psychological thriller, the movie doesn't quite create the same feeling of tension and suspense as other Hitchcock films. This could be because Selznick had the final cut of the film, which apparently was quite different from Hitchcock's edit. I wish we could see Hitchcock's version for a comparison of the two.

I'll have to admit that, although I enjoyed Rebecca in the end, I became very tired of Joan Fontaine's unnamed character. I kept wanting to tell her to buck up, take some control, and stop letting Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) push you around. I know that would be playing against the character type, but the wide-eyed timidity was starting to greatly annoy me. Laurence Olivier was quite handsome in his day, wasn't he, and I thought he did an excellent job.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.