On portraying Mrs. Danvers
I first saw the movie Rebecca on TV when I was about ten years old, and was immediately taken with it. I went on to read the book when I was very young, too, and loved it. The movie is something of a chick-flick, but a chick-flick made by Alfred Hitchcock with a stellar cast and a brooding Gothic quality along with some romance.
It was Judith Anderson’s (later Dame Judith Anderson) role as the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers that especially creeped me out. The movie was made in 1940, and although Anderson had been acting for ages, the role made her far more famous and earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Here she is with the shy and nameless second wife of Maximilian de Winter (Laurence Olivier) played perfectly by Joan Fontaine:
Anderson almost overacts but keeps it under tight control. There are oodles of subtexts there, and her extremely polite malevolence is palpable.
Compare to a modern remake from 2020:
The video is entitled, “Kristin Scott Thomas is terrifying as Mrs. Danvers in REBECCA (2020) movie clip.” Oh, really? Terrifying? They wish. To me, she just comes across as a Mean Girl.
But perhaps it’s unfair to compare anyone to Anderson in the role. I happen to think it’s not just the actresses that makes the difference, but the passage of time and taste: black-and-white versus color, and a certain conviction and gravitas about how to portray evil. And of course, Hitchcock.
I was 11 and my sister was 9 and we stayed up for the CBS Late Show – this movie scared the hell out of us and I have never watched it again. That was in 1958
I remember the 1997 tv mini series as being pretty good though it has been a while since I saw it. A very young Emilia Fox played the second Mrs de Winter and Diana Rigg played Mrs Danvers.
John Galt III:
You might try giving it another go. You could probably handle it now 🙂 . It won Best Picture back when that actually meant something.
Daphne du Maurier and Alfred Hitchcock were a natural pairing (why yes, I do have most of her books…).
Rebecca was the second “collaboration” between them, following Jamaica Inn.
Du Maurier also wrote the short story, “The Birds,” which I only just now discovered. The internet is useful for some things, if you stay out of politics.
If you haven’t seen the film(s) or read the book(s), do NOT read the Wikipedia article(s)!
They need to institute a “spoiler” HTML block code for movie and book posts
(LibraryThing has one that can be used in Reviews).
Here is a very old review of the short story collection that included The Birds.
Du Maurier was reportedly not happy with the screen version.
There are no spoilers in most of the story descriptions.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/may/05/fiction.daphnedumaurier
I missed that one somehow…going to go stream it ASAP
Truly great movie.
It’s a terrific film I’ve seen many times. I’ve read or seen somewhere that Hitchcock and David O. Selznick didn’t get along very well during the making and one contentious issue was the ending of the film. Selznick wanted the smoke curling up from the fire to spell ‘R’ in the sky. Hitchcock figuratively said “Oh, please! Never.”
But reflecting on that sort of vision split, I wonder if Hitchcock’s extremely spare style and Selznick’s more schmaltzy vision wasn’t actually a good pairing. I think the film benefits from a bit of Hollywood schmaltz.
Dame Anderson’s character is definitely the heart of the story, but don’t forget George Sanders. He is so wonderfully smooth and sleazy.
And I always got a huge kick out of seeing Nigel Bruce’s appearances. He is always and forever Dr. Watson for me.
I might look up the 1997 version just to see Diana Rigg play Danvers.
I have seen The Birds many times also. More times than it is worth I suppose, but the California locale and color, and some very good performances, as well as the strange story line keep me coming back to it.
It wasn’t until I had seen it several times that I got the distinct impression that the budding romance and Mrs. Brenner’s fear of losing her son’s affections were linked to the bird attacks. Of course, it’s insane to take that literally, but the story seems to want to connect the two.
Parents are supposed to let go of their adult, or nearly adult children and it usually seems a little creepy when they don’t. So, to connect those two creepy story elements is a very odd thing to do. What’s interesting is that our rational mind strongly rejects that linkage, so you are not even aware of it.
I only occasionally see a film and then read the original story or novel, but I may check out the Du Maurier story.
Another old film where an actress hits the ball out of the park when playing a villain, is Barbara Stanwyck playing Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (1944).
That one was remade too (1973), and it wasn’t remotely as good.
Supposedly the film Body Heat (1981) was a very updated version of Double Indemnity. It’s rather good, perhaps because it wasn’t just a remake. It’s amusing that in the 1944 version, a film critic pointed out the scene where the two apparently have sex. You can barely tell that there is some inference. Whereas, in Body Heat the sex is a major plot element involving a number of scenes.
When I read the actual story, I kept wanting to stop and hit the heroine upside the head, she was so dumb.
It’s one of the few roles I thought Fontaine was really good in. Also, Suspicion and The Women. But anything demand something more than an idiot doesn’t work. She was far inferior to her sister as an actress, IMO.
Eeyore:
Fontaine was very good in Jane Eyre as well. And Jane was quite intelligent.
I’m surprised you thought the person she played in Rebecca was stupid. I see her as painfully shy, awkward, and naive but not stupid.
I started watching “Rebecca” last night. I thought I had seen all the major Hitchcocks but I guess I missed this one.
Wonderfully moody so far. Magnificent cinematography as usual from Hitchcock.
I read “The Birds” in an old science-fiction anthology before I saw the film. I’ve seen it several times now and liked it.
One time was with my 90s girlfriend. On that basis she planned a bed-and-breakfast weekend in Guerneville, close to the scene of “The Birds.” However, we didn’t realize that by then main street Guerneville was almost totally gay. We were the only straight couple we saw.
We got a few looks, but we were treated OK.
I saw “Rebecca” in about 1958, it was televised as a late-night movie; I was about 12 years old. A year or so later I stumbled onto the book in my junior high school library. I recognized the title, opened it to the first page, and read the first sentence: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” I slammed it shut and checked it out immediately. Over the next few years I fell so in love with it, and read it over and over again–19 times before I simply stopped counting. Hitchcock’s movie was a brilliant adaptation of an exquisite novel. I still love them both.
I’m surprised you thought the person she played in Rebecca was stupid.
I kind of get that. Not stupid exactly, but you definitely wanted her to grow a pair and snap out of it. But I think that added to the tension. You realize how terrified she is, and she’s trying desperately to do right by her new husband – but she doesn’t know how. It’s on my short list of nearly perfect movies.
Well, Neo, are you sure you aren’t just trying to tie this back into your posting on the media?
The sly duplicitous vile media, engaging and corrupting the useful idiots?
Keeping them away from the virtuous and valid MAGA and related conservatives?
[I have not seen the movie (as best i can recall) nor read the book(s), so I am inserting (or is it extracting?) a lot into (or from) the 6 minutes supplied here.]
All good horror writers know the monster and fear is within us.
My aunt took me to see “The Birds” when I was just a kid. I didn’t really want to go, I thought, why would I want to see a movie about birds? But it scared the hell out of me and I loved it. She was my favorite aunt and was always doing things like that. Come to think of it, she took me to see “Psycho” as well.
Netflix did a really sordid remake of rebecca with some years back with the notorious arnie hammer, leaving no nuance outstanding
As others have noted the hayes code
constrained the worst impulses of
billie wilder in both indemnity and boulevard
Which raymond chandler and leigh brackett restrained
Modern noir treatments are horrid take my word for it