We're in Monte Carlo. Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) is standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean, presumably contemplating suicide, when he is interrupted by a young girl (Joan Fontaine, we are never told her name in the movie). She's a "paid companion" to a very obnoxious lady named Mrs. Van Hopper (Florence Bates). Max decides to take her out for a drive, and pretty soon they are seeing each other every day (she tells Mrs. Van Hopper she's taking "tennis lessons.") Of course, they fall in love, but there are a couple of problems. For one thing, Mrs. van Hopper's daughter is getting married and she must leave for New York immediately. Max handles that one, telling Mrs. Van hopper that he and Joan are in love and are going to be married. They will live on his estate, "Manderlay." The other problem is that Max was married before, to a woman named Rebecca, and according to Mrs. van Hopper, "He simply adored her!"
At Manderlay, the new Mrs. De Winter meets the old housekeeper, the very strange Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson). It's been a year since Rebecca died, apparently in a sailing accident (she loved to sail), yet Mrs. Danvers treats the situation as if she were still alive, practically worshipping her memory. Parts of this movie are very strange, but perhaps the strangest scene is when Mrs. Danvers shows Mrs. de Winter Rebecca's old room in the West Wing. It's not used any more, and remains exactly as it was on the day Rebecca died. She shows the new Mrs. de Winter Rebecca's clothes, still hanging in the closet. She even opens a drawer and shows her Rebecca's underwear! But it gets weirder still. The window in the room looks out over the ocean. Mrs. Danvers tells Mrs. De Winter that she doesn't belong at Manderlay, and it would be quick and easy to just jump. "Why don't you?"
The scene at the costume ball shows us how cruel Mrs. Danvers can be. She chooses a dress for Mrs. de Winter to wear, which turns out to be the same one Rebecca wore at the last ball. Instead of yelling at his wife, Max should yell at Mrs. Danvers, and fire her immediately. After all, how could Mrs. de Winter possibly know that it was the same dress Rebecca wore?
OK, it's a little strange, but it's getting stranger. Just before she died, Rebecca and Max were having an argument at the boat house on the beach. Rebecca told Max she was having an affair with Jack Favell (George Sanders) and she was going to have his baby. During the argument, she tripped and fell, hitting her head on a piece of ship's tackle.
Now, most men would call the police and tell them his wife died in an accident. But not Max. He takes the body and places it in the bottom of Rebecca's sailboat, opens the seacocks (to let the water in), punches holes in the hull (to let more water in), and sinks the boat! When a boat surfaced with a woman inside, he identified her as Rebecca, although he knew it wasn't her.
That was a year ago, and now another boat has risen to the surface. And this time it IS Rebecca. Meanwhile, Max and his new bride are having a long discussion in the boathouse. She's going on and on about how she knew she could never compete with Rebecca, how he was always comparing her to his first wife, and how she realizes how much he loved her. Max finally sets her straight. "YOU THINK I LOVED HER? IS THAT WHAT YOU THINK? I HATED HER!"
The police are called in, and Favell and Mrs. Danvers both suspect Max of foul play. But Favell promises to keep his mouth shut, provided Max will give him a couple of million dollars! It turns out that Rebecca was seeing a doctor in London, a Dr. Baker (Leo G. Carroll). Favell thought it was because she was going to have his child, but to make sure, Max, Flavell, and the police travel to London to see the doctor. As it turns out, Rebecca had cancer. When the doctor told her she had only a few months to live, she replied, "Oh, no doctor, not that long." So there's your verdict: suicide.
Driving back to London with a friend, Max notices there are lights in the sky. Manderlay is on fire. After a short interval, Max finds his wife outside with their dog Jasper. "It's Mrs. Danvers. She's gone mad. She said she'd rather destroy Manderlay that have me continue to live there." Next, we see a deranged Mrs. Danvers, roaming around the burning house with a lighted candle. (Uh, Mrs. Danvers, you don't need a candle, the house is already on fire!) The final shot of the burning logs falling (presumably on Mrs. Danver's head) is magnificent, and deserves to be seen on the big screen, and by that I don't mean television.
Of course, I never saw any Alfred Hitchcock movies until many years after they were made. When I was a kid, I grew up watching classic movies on TV, films like "Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers," "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," and "Attack of the Crab Monsters." And who can ever forget "The Incredible Shrinking Man" and "I Was A Teenage Werewolf?" (Michael Landon tried.) It's a wonder I grew up to be fairly normal. That's Fairly Normal. NOT ABBIE NORMAL! And so, in the words of the immortal Mel Brooks, "SEE YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN! BUT DON'T SEE IT ALONE!"
Rebecca (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
4.8 | 1,447 ratings
Price: 19.99
Last update: 07-30-2024
About this item
| Genre | Mystery & Suspense/Film Noir, Mystery & Suspense |
| Format | Subtitled, Widescreen |
| Contributor | Alfred Hitchcock, Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier |
| Language | English |
| Runtime | 2 hours and 10 minutes |
From the manufacturer
Rebecca (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
Romance becomes psychodrama in the elegantly crafted Rebecca, Alfred Hitchcock’s first foray into Hollywood filmmaking. A dreamlike adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel, the film stars the enchanting Joan Fontaine as a young woman who believes she has found her heart’s desire when she marries the dashing aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter (played with cunning vulnerability by Laurence Olivier). But upon moving to Manderley-her groom’s baroque ancestral mansion-she soon learns that his deceased wife haunts not only the estate but the temperamental, brooding Maxim as well. The start of Hitchcock’s legendary collaboration with producer David O. Selznick, this elegiac gothic vision, captured in stunning black and white by George Barnes.
Top reviews from the United States
classicfilmfan
"YOU THINK I LOVED HER? IS THAT WHAT YOU THINK? I HATED HER!"
Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2023Charles S. New Mexico
A great Hitchcock film with lots of twists
Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2024Rodriguera
alfred hitchcock's best picture winner
Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2024
John Fowler
2017 CRITERION BLU-RAY VERSUS 2011 MGM BLU-RAY + Hitchcock filmography
Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2019
John Fowler
Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2019
PHOTO 2 = Hitchcock's cameo @ 2:06:57 (MGM) or 2:07:01 (Criterion) - Hitchcock walking in the background.
PHOTO 3 = NOT Hitchcock's cameo - this is a still photo taken on the set.
The new 2017 Criterion Collection blu-ray of ‘Rebecca’ comes into direct competition with the 2011 MGM blu-ray
The Criterion blu-ray has the magical words “4K digital restoration”, giving it a theoretical advantage over MGM’s ten-year-old 2-K (?) digital restoration,
but the actual improvement is not dramatic, at least on my 40 inch, five year-old JVC TV.
Both blu-rays look quite good.
Of course, if you own a state-of-the-art 70 inch 4-K television (or plan to), the choice is obvious.
Making the choice easier, the price of the old MGM blu-ray is twice that of the new Criterion blu-ray (apparently the MGM is out-of-print).
COMMON TO CRITERION AND MGM BLU-RAYs
-- The Making of Rebecca: (28 minutes)
-- Isolated music and effects track.
-- Three radio adaptations of Rebecca:
----- 1938: Margaret Sullavan & Orson Welles
----- 1941: Ida Lupino & Ronald Colman
----- 1950: Vivien Leigh & Lawrence Olivier
-- Theatrical re-release trailer from the late Forties (MGM misidentifies it as the “original release trailer”)
-- English SDH subtitles.
UNIQUE TO MGM BLU-RAY
-- Audio commentary with film scholar Richard Schickel.
-- The Gothic World of Daphne du Maurier (18 minutes)
-- Hitchcock/Bogdanovich interview.
-- Hitchcock/Truffaut interview.
UNOQUE TO CRITERION BLU-RAY:
-- 4K digital restoration with uncompressed monaural soundtrack.
-- Featurette on the visual effects in Rebecca (17 minutes).
-- French TV production from 2016: Daphne du Maurier: In the Footsteps of Rebecca with English subtitles (55 minutes).
-- Conversation between film critic Molly Haskell and scholar Patricia White about the role of women in Hitchcock films (25 minutes)
-- Audio commentary with film scholar Leonard J. Leff. *
-- Screen tests with Anne Baxter, Vivien Leigh, Margaret Sullavan, Loretta Young and Joan Fontaine (only Vivien Leigh and Margaret Sullavan were on MGM).*
-- Hair and makeup tests with Anne Baxter, Vivien Leigh and Margaret Sullavan. *
-- Costume tests with Joan Fontaine. *
-- 38 page booklet with selected production correspondence, including letters between Hitchcock and Selznick. *
-- “The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder” - this followed the Tonight Show on NBC:
----- 1973: Alfred Hitchcock (45 minutes). *
----- 1980: Joan Fontaine (17 minutes). *
-- Audio interviews from 1986 with Judith Anderson and Joan Fontaine. *
* Carried over from the 2001 Criterion DVD
ALFRED HITCHCOCK FILMOGRAPHY:
Alfred Hitchcock directed 56 feature films (not counting short subjects).
---- 'The Mountain Eagle' (1927) is a lost film.
---- 'Blackmail' (1929) is counted twice - it was Hitchcock's final silent film, and was also filmed as his first talkie.
---- 'Aventure Malgache' and 'Bon Voyage' (1944) are not feature films. These were French-language propaganda shorts (combined running time: 57 minutes) produced during World War II. Available on DVD or Amazon Prime Video.
For a complete list, along with links to these films on Amazon, see Comment Three (click on “Sort by Oldest”).
Images in this review
Diane K. Godfrey
Excellent film.
Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2023IsleAnder
Great movie commentary ok
Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2023