“Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again…”

Of course the circumstances of the nameless heroine’s makeover here are different, but I couldn’t help but find vast parallels watching Rebecca this time around to Hitchcock’s much later Vertigo… like the “second” Kim Novak there, Joan Fontaine here finds herself in a relationship where she feels bound to live up to her predecessor, in this case the eponymous Rebecca. The difference here of course is that when she finally does fully absorb herself in the role, it turns out to be precisely the opposite of what was desired.

The beautiful cinematography has shadows cast over every frame but this is a movie big on revealing and unveiling things: the ride up to Manderlay… the mystery of Rebecca’s old room… her wardrobe… It all adds to the wonderfully haunting sense of Rebecca’s continued presence in these peoples’ lives. Hitchcock would say of the story, “There certainly is a great quality… in the fact that we feel Rebecca throughout rather than see her…” and he was right… it also happens to be one of my favourite things that cinema can do quite brilliantly in the right hands, such as his.

There’s a flawlessness to the pace and editing here that Hitchcock had only hit a few times before, in the likes of The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes. It has the dread and the melodrama he’d broached in stories like The Manxman but above all it’s a spectacle also. It’s almost suffocatingly dark in places, such as Mrs Danvers’ coaxing our heroine into suicide. But there’s even touches of comedy to be found, like the butler handing a wealthy guest his cartoonish dumbbell at the costume ball.

The ending unfortunately lets the movie down a little for me. I’m all for courtroom drama but there’s no place for it here and, coming long after the main conflict has been resolved, feels tagged on. I wasn’t surprised, therefore, to find on the (extraordinary) Criterion DVD extras that much of this was the result of studio (Selznick) and external (production code) interference. There is of course one last reveal and a wonderful final scene that surely inspired Orson Welles in Citizen Kane (it’s not the only thing, either; Manderlay itself is a clear ancestor to Xanadu), but it never really pulls itself back together enough for me to praise it as high as I’d like given the hypnotic poetry displayed early on.

Having read of how much Selznick interfered however (he apparently wanted the smoke from the fire at the end to spell the film’s closing initial “R”, lol), it’s hard to complain; it’s almost a miracle the movie has even patches of brilliance, and really goes to show Hitchcock’s skill at getting his vision on screen.

Tags: Hitchcock

This entry was posted on Friday, October 22nd, 2010 at 5:24 pm and is filed under 4 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.