The only movie by Alfred Hitchcock to ever win Best Picture at the Academy Awards was his 1940 gothic romance Rebecca, adapted from the novel by Daphne du Maurier. It’s not quite one of his classics, falling somewhere in the middle of any ranking of his work, but of course it’s still an impressive film by any other measure, owing a lot to George Barnes’ cinematography and the performances from Laurence Olivier and Judith Anderson (sorry Joan Fontaine, but you were better in Suspicion). The film remains the more remembered version of the story, but du Maurier’s novel has actually retained a level popularity separate from the film, in part due to the strength of its’ premise: an unnamed woman marries a rich aristocrat only to be psychologically haunted by the imposing memory of his late and seemingly perfect first wife. And yet it’s not a story that really warrants further adaptation -the first one was close enough to the book that’s there’s not much new to add without throwing away the source material entirely. It also doesn’t invite a host of new interpretation or relevance in 2020, the inherent themes of manipulation and toxic relationships were there and conscious in both the book and original film. In the context of portraying them today, they are more widely resonant, but not by a great margin more than either the original film or the many other movies that have tackled such topics in recent years.
Still, Ben Wheatley went to the effort to direct a new adaptation of Rebecca for Netflix, one that sticks very close to the story but with some slight fleshing out of the new Mrs. de Winter. Lily James is cast in the part as a woman of relative ambition and compulsion compared to her 1940 counterpart -grounded somewhat in a more humble background and with a great desire to travel. Though in its’ way, this is merely substituting one kind of endemic Hollywood character writing for another. More time is spent setting up her burgeoning relationship with Armie Hammers’ Maxim de Winter in Monte Carlo, and the pair have some chemistry, but it’s not substantial enough to make the whirlwind romance and sudden marriage any less shallow. For as casual as they may be in each others’ company and as down-to-earth as Wheatley attempts to draw Max (at least in this part of the story), it still comes across as romantic fantasy -though a terribly reluctant one.
And this persists. Often the film seems to be at odds with the kind of gothic romance that Rebecca is, or trying aimlessly to subvert while maintaining the novels’ plot and story beats. Consider the characterization of Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper of Max’s mansion Manderley and fiercely devoted to the late Rebecca -to the point of frequently sabotaging and tormenting the new Mrs. de Winter. Kristin Scott Thomas plays her here, once again the best part of a mediocre movie, with that subtly duplicitous refined elegance few actresses can perform better. Her obsession with Rebecca though is more of a slow build and not nearly as fanatical, depriving the film of one of its’ key sources of high emotion -which the genre and this story are all about. Sometimes that comes from Mrs. de Winter or Max, and sometimes the more intimate, restrained emotionality really works -the costume ball scene where Mrs. de Winter unknowingly wears Rebecca’s old dress on Danvers’ machinations is particularly well done (there’s also a great sequence of subjective surreality here illustrating Mrs. de Winters’ insecurity, embarrassment, and impostor syndrome that is probably the most genuinely relatable she ever gets in the film). But just as often such choices run afoul of the very nature of the story at hand. This film also leans in a little more to the homosexual undertones of Danvers’ infatuation with the late Rebecca, elements repressed by the Production Code for Hitchcock’s version, but not enough so to openly suggest such a thing or really make a difference in how her character is played.
Perhaps the movies’ strongest virtue though is how pretty it is. The Monte Carlo scenes especially are bathed in strong and saccharine romantic colours, golds and reds particularly –artificial though shot very nicely. Even in the often dark and haunted Manderley, there’s some nice lighting choices, such as rendering the ball in a vibrant and warm glow, or a serious scene between Mrs. de Winter and Mrs. Danvers that seems to incorporate moody natural lighting. The film makes much better use of its location shooting too, allowing for some very nice scenery and changing the setting of one crucial moment in the climax that I actually think is more dramatic and gothic even than in the Hitchcock version.
And yet watching Rebecca is not unlike watching a Disney live-action remake. It may not be a change of form, but it has just as much a desire to closely re-enact the original story while reconstructing aspects of it to be more realistic or modern as those ungodly banal exercises in corporate cynicism. It’s still a good story and a nice looking film, with some smart choices in the directing and cinematography –Scott Thomas is also quite worthwhile, but it doesn’t quite justify its’ own existence. And I feel like Ben Wheatley realizes this too, in spite of himself –it doesn’t have the energy of his past films like High Rise and Free Fire. This film is ultimately its’ own plot in microcosm: unable to escape the shadow of the original Rebecca.
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