Hitchcock’s first American movie, “Rebecca,” a 1940 production from Selznick International Pictures, isn’t just a suspense film, it’s an experience in pure psychological unease. Forget jump scares; here, the dread is a slow burn, a creeping sense of wrongness that infects the viewer as much as it does the second Mrs. de Winter. And Joan Fontaine, well, she isn’t just good as the unnamed bride; she’s a revelation. She starts as this almost naive, hopeful young woman, and slowly, the weight of Manderley, and the shadow of Rebecca, starts to crush her, and you can see it all in the way she carries herself, in her anxious glances, and her increasingly desperate attempts to find her place. You can’t help but feel for her; she’s utterly lost.
She finds herself in this huge, gothic pile of a house, Manderley, after a whirlwind romance with the widower, Maxim de Winter, played with a mixture of charm and barely-concealed turmoil by Laurence Olivier. Now, the thing about Manderley is, it’s a place that seems to breathe; it’s not just a setting, it’s a character itself, saturated with the memory of Maxim’s deceased wife, Rebecca. And that’s where Mrs. Danvers comes in, played with such chilling intensity by Judith Anderson. She seems to float through the house, a malevolent ghost in her own right, her eyes always watching, always judging. She hates the new Mrs. De Winter, it’s plain to see, and makes no secret of her worship of the dead Rebecca. It’s a masterclass in simmering resentment.
The supporting cast, including George Sanders as the oily Jack Favell, Rebecca’s cousin, and Reginald Denny as the steadfast Frank Crawley, each adds their own shade to this already dark painting. The way Hitchcock uses the camera, it’s almost like a visual language; the shadows lengthen, the angles get more skewed, creating this feeling of being trapped.
It’s a house with secrets, and those secrets, are just waiting to come out. This isn’t just about a woman trying to fit in; it’s a study of how a past can haunt the present. The tension is cranked up slowly, like a tightening screw, until the truth about Rebecca bursts into the open. It’s not a film that gives you all the answers; it lets the questions linger, which is perhaps why “Rebecca” continues to grip audiences after all this time. It is a proper old fashioned thriller that gets under your skin.
“Rebecca” is a Selznick International Pictures production.
Release Date: 1940
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, Judith Anderson, George Sanders, Reginald Denny.