Another Hollywood great is gone, this time at the age of 96.

You may be reluctant to place Joan Fontaine among the “greats.” You may even have trouble distinguishing her from her perhaps-more-well-known-actress sister—from whom she was estranged for most of her life—Olivia de Havilland, who is presently 97 and still alive.

But Fontaine was my favorite, for two early films of hers: “Rebecca” and “Jane Eyre.” The two roles are related. Rebecca was a Gothic novel about a shy young woman who marries an arrogant rich guy and goes off to live in a mansion with the shadow of his former wife (now deceased) hanging over her head. It was acknowledged to have been inspired in part by Jane Eyre, a novel about a shy young woman who goes off to live as governess in a mansion owned by an arrogant rich guy with the shadow of a madwomen (who turns out to be his wife) hanging over her head.

The roles of Jane and the nameless main character of “Rebecca” (Rebecca is the name of the dead former wife) are somewhat similar, and Fontaine could have chosen to play them almost exactly the same. But instead she instilled each with a different tone, and she did it mainly with her body language. The young woman she plays in “Rebecca” is shy and not especially brave, with the easily-seen-through courage of bravado, and her posture is a bit slumped and nervous. Her Jane is also shy but has an inner strength, a core of iron, despite the requirement to appear modest and sedate. Her posture in that film is quiet and self-contained, with a minimum of movement and fuss.

The love interest in “Rebecca” is the brusque, sometimes short-tempered, and somewhat mysterious Maxim de Winter, played by Laurence Olivier. Jane’s own true love Mr. Rochester is played by Orson Welles, who seems an odd choice until you see his hypnotic intensity in the role—to me, he is the best Rochester ever.

“Rebecca” was directed by the master Alfred Hitchcock. “Jane Eyre” boasted a script written by John Houseman and Aldous Huxley. Both movies are in black and white, and both dramatically emphasize the more gothic aspects of their respective stories.

YouTube has full-length videos of both movies, but not as many shorter excerpts as I’d like. Here’s a clip of the frightened Fontaine in “Rebecca,” in a scene in which she succumbs to curiosity and enters the bedroom of her predecessor Rebecca and is then interrupted by the stupendously creepy head housekeeper (and Rebecca’s former personal maid) Mrs. Danvers, played by the incomparable Judith Anderson, who seems to be reprising her turn as Lady Macbeth and/or presaging her performance as Medea.

Fontaine hardly speaks here. But watch the way she moves and the way she watches Anderson:

And here’s Fontaine as Jane Eyre. This scene is in an over-the-top staging that would be read as ludicrous today. What saves it from foolishness, even in this short clip, is the utter conviction both Fontaine and Welles bring to their lines. Here Mr. Rochester surprises Jane by proposing to her when she thinks he is going to marry someone else and send her away instead:

When I was doing the research for this film, I noticed that there are an enormous number of filmed versions of the story. They keep remaking it and trying to get it right, but getting it right would be impossible, so they just keep on trying. The book is too beloved, too literary, too plot-laden, with too much verbiage devoted to Jane’s internal thoughts, to be a completely satisfying film in comparison to what the reader can conjure up in the realm of imagination. But from my hour or two spent watching clips of the same proposal scene from almost all the different versions, I have to say that the 1944 version that starred Fontaine and Welles was by far the best and the only one for me.

Yes, the 1944 version took many liberties with the plot and the dialogue. Among other things, it’s a great deal shorter than most modern versions, many of which were first made as a TV series and could therefore take a more leisurely stroll through the plot. But Huxley and Houseman and director Robert Stevenson knew what they were doing, and the subsequent innumerable Janes and Rochesters never seem to inhabit their roles in the same way.

Here are a few clips to sample—all of them, for comparison sake, of that same proposal scene. In chronological order, first we have 1970’s George C. Scott and Susannah York (both of these great actors seem miscast to me here):

1973:

1983:

1996 (William Hurt miscast as Rochester):

2006:

2011 (with Mia Wasikowska, an actress I admire a great deal but whose body language and manner in this role completely misses the period effect; she might as well be wearing jeans and a T-shirt)

That may be way too many Janes and Rochesters for your taste.