The Villain Does Not Appear: The Invisible Power of Rebecca

Welcome to the first Everything But Bone of 2019. It’s been a hectic year so far for me, so I hope it’s been treating you better than I. For this week’s article, I thought we would examine another of Alfred Hitchcock’s greats, and a personal favorite, Rebecca (1940). Adapted from the Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel of the same name, Rebecca fits into many genres, gothic romance, a thriller, a ghost story.  With good performances from Joan Fontaine, Laurence Oliver, and Judith Anderson, this version of Rebecca is the best one.

Rebecca is the story of a young woman who falls in love with a widower while working as a companion in Monte Carlo. Maxim de Winter is rich, charming, and the pair fall fast in love. However, Maxim’s first wife, the glorious and elegant Rebecca died tragically in a boating accident a year prior. The second Mrs. de Winter worries about how she compares to her predecessor. Mrs. Danvers, the creepy Rebecca-worshiping housekeeper, doesn’t help her fit in at Maxim’s family grand estate Manderly. But things go from bad to worse when a sunken boat is recovered in the bay, and it isn’t empty.

As far as adaptions go, Hitchcock and the screenwriting team kept the film as close to the novel as possible, with one notable change (more on that later.) The famous first line, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again,” opens the film.  A decent amount of the dialogue is pulled directly from the novel as well. The second Mrs. de Winter is a highly introspective person, and much of her characterization in the novel comes from her first-person narration. Luckily, Joan Fontaine is expressive enough as an actress to get across the constant anxiety she feels.

What makes Rebecca, both film and book, unique is the way that certain characters are presented to audiences. Firstly, the narrator is not the titular character. In fact, the young woman that becomes the second Mrs. de Winter is never named. She spends the film being out of place, so it’s fitting that we don’t know her true name, only the labels that others’ give her.

The title character Rebecca never actually appears, nor do we get a description of what she looked like. There are no pictures or paintings of Rebecca. In fact, she’s long dead by the time the film starts. She’s a ghost in all the ways but the paranormal. But Rebecca remains everywhere.  To get to know her, audiences get to see what has been left behind in her absence.  Her pointed handwriting is in appointment book that the second Mrs. de Winter looks in. Everyone says that she was wonderful. Mrs. Danvers takes our protagonist on an unsettling tour through Rebecca’s bedroom, unchanged since it’s mistress’ death..

Some adaptions of Rebecca choose to have her voice or parts of her face shown. The 1997 miniseries version, starring Charles Dance, Emilia Fox and Diana Rigg, has the audience see Rebecca’s piercing eyes and hear her voice as she shouts at Maxim. Personally, I think that it is far more effective to not know anything about her appearance. Your mind filling in the blanks is always better at creating fear, and like the second Mrs. de Winter you should be afraid of Rebecca.

Spoiler alert, half way through the story, the audience is given the truth about Rebecca and her death. Unlike what those around her were saying, the second Mrs. de Winter learns that Rebecca was a manipulative abuser, Maxim receiving most of the abuse. Here’s where the adaption differs from the source material, and it’s all thanks to the Hollywood Production Code. In the novel, Maxim admits to the narrator that he killed Rebecca during an argument and put her body in a boat and scuttled it. However, by the standards of code, admitting to murder would make Maxim a villain and he would need to be punished.

In Hitchcock’s film, Maxim instead says that he shoved Rebecca during the climactic fight. She fell, hit her head, and died.  This slight change allows Maxim to stay on the side of “good.”

Rebecca does have a villain with a strong physical presence, the dour and obsessive Mrs. Danvers. I enjoy Judith Anderson performance, and I focused on it for a paper in college. While Laurence Oliver and Joan Fontaine do well as the leads, it is Anderson that makes Mrs. Danvers iconic. The moment she steps on screen, you know she’s bad news. But Anderson gives Mrs. Danvers dimension. She is the only character to show genuine grief for Rebecca, and clearly loved her a great deal. Whether that love was familiar, friendly, or romantic is up to your own interpretation.

Hitchcock’s Rebecca would go on to win two of the eleven Academy Awards it was nominated for, Best Picture and Cinematography. Your mileage may vary on the importance of the Oscars, but Rebecca was worthy of its awards. The film is an excellent example of trusting the audience to create their own mental image of what cannot (or should not) be shown on screen.