Rebecca

Rebecca has always been a favorite film of mine! I am one of a legion of growing fans who love the stylish female noir classic which was Alfred Hitchcock's American debut as a director. The analysis of the film is by Dr. Patricia White a film scholar who teaches at Swarthmore College. She analyses the film from a feminine perspective.The little book is one of the many books on film by the British Film Institute. In this book I learned:1. Vivian Leigh wanted the part as did Margaret Sullivan, Ann Baxter and other Hollywood stars of the Golden Age of Cinema.2. The film has a lesbian subtext. Mrs Danvers was in love with the evil Rebecca.3. Rebecca is never seen in the movie and the heroine played by Joan Fontaine is only known as "I."4. The runaway bestseller was written by Daphne DuMaurier who also wrote such classics as My Cousin Rachel, Jamacia Inn, the Birds and Frenchman's Creek. She came from a famous theatrical and literary family and loved her home in Cornwall.5. A Cornwall mansion which the author purchased was the estate upon which the fictional Manderley was based,.6. While Danvers is burned to death in the movie in the novel she is allowed to live. Also in the book Maxim murders Rebecca with a gun while in the movie her death is accidental.6. The author updated Jane Eyre in her development of the novel written in 1937.7. The film has affinities with Gone With the Wind also produced by David O. Selznick.😊8. Joan Fontaine was nominated for Best Actress of 1940 but lost to Ginger Rogers who starred in Kitty Foyle. Fontaine did win the next Best Actress contest starring in Hitchcock' Suspicion with Cary Grant.9. The film is female gothic noir and is very atmospheric.10. Rebecca is very popular in the 21st century selling well as a novel and in in movie remakes of the film. The author uses a lot of psychological terms but overall the book is well worth buying. It is well illustrated with movie stills and scenes from the film.

There is no doubt about Ms. Patricia White's knowledge of the production, the writers, and the competition for the part of the protagonist from the movie of the same name. She has a nice photo in her book of Protagonist's head covered by her rain coat mirrored in the facade of the Manderley mansion, which impressed me. But in her prologue to the book, she plants her flag very forthrightly, announcing that she will offer us a feminist/gay perspective on the film. And in her notes you'll find all the usual suspects rounded up to support her theories. She spends too much time talking about pronouns and says she will use the personal pronoun I to represent the main character. It can be confusing at times, and a little pretentious. She is a good writer, but I found the constant references of feminist theory and gay theory to be tiresome. She, of course, has a right to say what she feels is in the film, but I would rather have her discuss more of the sets, and actors. In one section of the film where Ms. Danvers discovers the protagonist in Rebecca's bedroom(boudoir), she does an excellent job of outlining and detailing the lesbian aspects of the scene(both past and present), from knowing where Rebecca's underwear could be found, to rubbing the mink coat against the protagonist's face, and running her fingers through the black nightgown. A very sheer nightgown, I might add. It is a great lesbian moment highlighted by the excellent acting of Judith Anderson, whom I admire from her other films--The Furies, and, of course, Laura. Ms. White does do a fine job of pointing out the lesbian theme, which is obvious from the discussion of he underwear and the nightgown, and so it becomes somewhat boring. She does have an excellent essay at the end of her book with an examination of various remakes, retoolings, restudying of the Rebecca theme, with some interesting observations of Du Maurier's own sexual tendencies, as well as her lesbian sisters(at the beginning of her book). Interestingly, one also finds out that she was married to the general who drafted the disastrous parachute jump into Holland during WWII, also played by the Gay actor, Sir Dirk Bogarde in the film, A Bridge Too Far. I don't think it was worth the price of the book for these few instances I've mentioned here. Ms. White is intelligent and a good writer but then Academia is full of them. Ms. White's book did force me to go and read Du Maurier's book of the same name--Rebecca. I've also seen her on TV and found her to be a delightful person, smart, cheerful and admiring the movie discussed in her book. I am sure she misses seeing those films with her mother.

From the book: "As I've argued in my account of the film's production, enacted in my close analysis, and highlighted by my discussion of tie-ins, intertexts and homages, Rebecca invites retrospective encounter, a necessarily ambivalent return." This jaw-dropping and unironic self-regard is characteristic of White's humorless, myopic reading of the film - stuck in the valid but unoriginal interpretation of Rebecca as a tale of hidden female power avenging itself on the evil patriarchy. It never seems to occur to her that Rebecca and her avatar, Danvers, are also doing to the Fontaine character what every other bully in the film does to her: crush her into submission and seek to obliterate her as a person. Still, this is a rich and detailed account of the movie and valuable to add to your library if you share the author's fascination with this famous movie. The movie, of course, eludes capture and lives to be interpreted another day and another way.

2 new BFI guides for Joan Fontaine's best films: Rebecca and Letter From An Unknown Woman.Great detail and scholarship.