Hitchcock’s first US production was a Gothic romance, tinged with madness, which earned 11 nominations and won the Best Picture Oscar (Hitch lost the best director award to John Ford for the “Grapes of Wrath”. Ford would win 4 directorial Oscars; Hitch never got a one).
The performances? Olivier as Mr. de Winter is both cooly suave and distant & troubled. Joan Fontaine does very well with the mousy stuff. She really does seem uncomfortable and uncertain, just as Hitch wants her to be. The supporting actors shine, the great George Sanders is suitably slimy, and Judith Anderson is perfectly batshit insane as the icy and cruel Mrs. Danvers (who really has it bad for the former lady of the house, which has some critics speculating that the two had a sexual liaison at some point).
Rebecca is Hitch at his most Hollywood slick and he does a great job of casting Rebecca's formidable shadow upon the whole film. While it loses some of its elegance when it slips into blackmail schemes and courtrooms, mostly it stays in its gothic lane with dreamy photography (it won an Oscar for best B&W Cinematography) and dreamy music from Franz Waxman who created a "ghost orchestra" by using a Hammond organ and two Hammond Novachords - a Novachord was a complex, expensive, polyphonic electronic keyboard, the first of its kind and in limited production, it provided the spooky vibratos you hear from time to time to represent Rebecca's haunting spirit.
Memorable Scenes: Joan Fontaine looks out a window as Mrs. Danvers speaks to her of suicide - Danvers engulfed by flame in the finale - The chilling opening sequence, with the camera moving through Manderley in ruins, is genius.
Memorable Quote: "You thought you could be Mrs. de Winter, live in her house, walk in her steps, take the things that were hers! But she's too strong for you. You can't fight her - no one ever got the better of her. Never, never. She was beaten in the end, but it wasn't a man, it wasn't a woman. It was the sea!" - Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers
Hitchcock Cameo: This one takes place near the end, he's seen outside the phone booth while Jack makes a call.
Of Note: Hitch’s first film for Selznick for the US of A, was reportedly going to be a movie about the Titanic
This was the second Daphne du Maurier adaptation for the director, and much more successful than the first (though I have an affection for Jamaica Inn, there's something weirdly intriguing about that one, surreal and nightmarish with an off-his nut performance from Charles Laughton). Alfred would later cover The Birds... and I wish he'd have done My Cousin Rachel, as IMHO, no one has quite nailed that story, I wonder if Hitch would have?
