Film
What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases
Rebecca (1940)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Movie review
From Time Out London
It’s quite fitting that the central character of ‘Rebecca’ (Joan Fontaine) goes unnamed. When we first meet her, in Monte Carlo, she’s under the thumb of the grotesque Mrs Van Hopper (Florence Bates), a domineering pheasant of a woman who spends her time belittling her sparrow-like paid companion, gobbling down chocolates and stubbing fags out in the cold cream. After the dashing, aloof Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) makes a none-too-romantic proposal (‘I’m asking you to marry me, you little fool’), she decamps to his Cornwall pile, Manderley.Here, under the constant scrutiny of his family, staff and spaniel Jasper, she is expected to slot into the hole left by his first wife, Rebecca, whose memory smothers the place like a dust-sheet – yet gives succour to Judith Anderson’s vulture-like housekeeper Mrs Danvers, whose creepy, monomaniac devotion to her late mistress understandably petrifies the young girl. Manderley’s oppressive atmosphere is also marked by the sheer number of things in the place, and the extra filters through which we frequently watch its action – muslin hangings, cobwebs, flames, even the light cast by a home movie projector.
Hitchcock’s first US production, ‘Rebecca’ was overseen by the notoriously hands-on David O Selznick, and is somewhat tonally inconsistent; following the social comedy of Monte Carlo and suspense of Manderley, the pace slackens in the crime procedural of the final half-hour, which is all tell and no show. Still, Hitchcock shows superb technical control and attends to his trademark motifs, from monstrous mother figures to the fetishisation of clothing (strong foreshadowings of ‘Vertigo’). Struggling not to drown in a stifling miasma of nostalgia, expectation and soft furnishings, it’s no surprise that our heroine’s own identity barely gets a look-in.
Author: Ben Walters
Time Out London Issue 1871: June 28-July 5 2006
Cast & crew
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Producer: David O Selznick
Cast: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Judith Anderson, Nigel Bruce, Gladys Cooper, Reginald Denny, C Aubrey Smith, Florence Bates, Melville Cooper, Leo G Carroll full cast
Genre(s): Thrillers
Rated: PG
Duration: 131 mins
UK Release: Jun 30 2006
Most popular on this site
Top Stories
A Farewell To Tartan Films
To mourn the loss of the great Tartan Films, Time Out remembers a few of the best films to emerge from their impressive canon
Jason Bateman: interview
Jason Bateman – star of ‘Hancock’, alongside Will Smith – talks to Time Out about his comic influences and how to pretend to throw a car
Ten Great Head Shots In The Movies
Lots of people get shot in the head in the new film 'Wanted'. Read our guide to some other great head shots on film
Set visit: 'The Damned United'
Dave Calhoun gets his training kit on as he visits the set of a new film about football legend Brian Clough’s torrid spell at Leeds United in the mid-1970s






What do you think?
Post your review now