Rebecca by ALFRED HITCHCOCK

Movie: Rebecca
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Release date: 1940
Cast: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson 

I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said Daphne du Maurier’s ‘ Rebecca’ was safe in the hands of Alfred Hitchcock. Though some alterations were made, he didn’t allow the essence of Maurier’s book to erode.


“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”


She was narrating her dream about Manderley. She was nameless.

In her dream, she saw, Manderley was deserted and abandoned. The shrubs, the trees , the plants had encroached the drive and all around from their usual place giving it a ghostly look. Like any other bride, when she came to Manderley dreamt of a quiet life with her husband. But there was something sinister going on in Manderly.


Every wall of Manderley was yelling a name ‘ Rebecca’. She was the first wife of Max de Winter who died of drowning in the sea. Mrs Danvers, an ardent devotee of Rebecca and the head house keeper of Manderley intimidated the narrator.


She met him in Monte Carlo, France where she was accompanying a wealthy American woman called Van Hopper as a paid companion. Her employer’s illness gave her the opportunity to spend more time with Max and eventually, they ended up marrying.

It was not that she had to fight with humans but with the haunting and all pervading presence of Rebecca, the first Mrs de Winter who died of drowning in the sea.

Rebecca was dead. But Manderley retained her undaunting spirits. Mrs Danvers had kept Manderley as if Rebecca had just gone out for a brief vacation and would be back anytime. The narrator did not do anything to alter the situation as she did not want to risk losing Max, her husband whom she thought was still in love with his first wife.



Everyone compared her with Rebecca. Beatrice, Max’s sister told her that she was nothing like Rebecca and when she met Max’s grandmother who also in her senility insisted of meeting Rebecca, leaving our narrator all the more perplexed. When Rebecca was alive, they had their bedroom in the western wing of the Manderly and the second Mrs de Winter and Max used the rooms in the eastern wing which was comparatively smaller in size.

Mrs Danvers intimidated her to such an extent that the latter was almost successful in convincing her to commit suicide by saying on and on that she was unwanted in Manderley, even her husband did not love her. She would have jumped from the roof of Rebecca had the rockets were not fired indicating that a ship was aground in the sea near to the mansion with Max ordering everybody to offer help to the people in the ship.

A year ago, after Rebecca went missing in the sea, a dead-body of a woman had washed up on the shore and Max identified her as Rebecca. But, to everybody’s dismay, when the divers dived in to check the condition of the ship, they came across a boat with a woman’s body stuck in its little cabin. The boat was of Rebecca’s.

No doubt! there would be an inquest. It was then our narrator heard something from her husband which she never expected. He was not in love with Rebecca and he hated her to the core. She was a woman of loose morals. That one sentence just changed our narrator in a trice.

Why was  Mrs de Winter or the narrator of the story nameless? Was it because even after marrying Max de Winter, the owner of the famous Manterly, she was reduced to a shadow of his first wife. Perhaps yes!

She was living in her own world of imagination.

The revelation by Max that he never loved Rebecca came as a pleasant surprise to her though it came with a heavy price to pay.


Mrs Danvers was a woman who was absolutely mesmerized by Rebecca. They were alike in spirits -absolutely inconsiderate of other’s emotions. She considered Rebecca’s audacity to continue her clandestine relationships under the nose of everybody at Manderley as something heroic. Mrs Danvers was a cruel soul who lacked judgement. According to Mrs Danvers, Rebecca loved only herself.

Judith Anderson

Max, on the other hand, loved his second wife. But he was smarting over his own pain that he could not explicitly express that he was in love with Rebecca. I would say he was not bold enough to confront the reality.


Speaking of the cast, Joan Fontaine who played the second Mrs De winter was perfect for the role. She could bring forth a naive, timid girl. After ‘ Gone with wind’ actor Vivian Leigh who was Olivier Laurence’s fiancee then wanted to take up the role of second Mrs De Winter. She also gave a test. But it never happened as it was deemed that her personality was too strong to play the demure, timid and gauche second Mrs De Winter.

Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier

I have read the book before watching the movie and I could never imagine anybody else in the role other than Joan Fontaine. Though Vivian Leigh could not work with Hitchcock in that movie, Alfred Hitchcock thought there was one role she could play and it was none other than the role of ‘ Rebecca’.

Like Joan Fontaine, the other actor who took her character to another level was Judith Anderson. The sinister look she had on her face was horrifying and the rigid look never wavered even for one single moment.


One of the main alterations which Hitchcock did with the movie was the death of Rebecca. When Daphne made Max kill her, Alfred made it an accidental death.

Alfred Hitchcock

Laurence Olivier was good in his role as Max but it was more of Joan’s movie. My imagination of Max after reading the book was a bit different, the primary one being his look. I imagined him to be somebody without a moustache. It did not mean that I did not like the ‘ Olivier Max’. Daphne like his Max.

Out of 11 nominations, Rebecca won two Academy Awards - Best Picture . It was also the opening film at the first Berlin International Film Festival in 1951.

Loved the movie and always a Hitchcock fan.

by Shalet Jimmy

The Lady Vanishes by Alfred Hitchcock (1938)

Talk about murder mysteries on trains, the first one that pops up in my mind is the movie and the book “ Murder on the Orient Express” by Agatha Christie. ‘ The Lady Vanishes’ reminds me of the same, though both are unique in their own way. The murder is committed in a moving train and most of them know that the murderer is still on the train. The excitement intensifies when the mystery has to be solved before the train reaches its destination.

To begin with, a moving train is a limited space for a murderer or a culprit to escape after committing the crime. But even with such faint chance, when the characters who are into investigating the incident encounter bottlenecks in their moves ahead, it becomes a real challenge not only to the investigating characters but the readers and spectators as well.

Without a speck of doubt, Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘ The Lady Vanishes’ easily fits into the above-mentioned category. Called as “ One of the greatest train movies from the genre's golden era" by The Guardian, it is based on Ethel Lina White’s novel  ‘ The wheel spins’, though with slight alterations in the plot to make it tighter.

The backdrop of the story is the political situation existed then which eventually gave way to the Second World War. The mystery begins when an old woman called Miss Froy disappears from a moving train. Iris, one of the protagonists met the old woman who calls herself a governess when another inmate, a musician named Gilbert disturbs their sleep by playing the music loudly in an inn where they all stayed for one night as the railway line was blocked by an avalanche.

The next day at the railway station, Iris gets hurt in the head when a big flower pot falls on her head. The attack was originally intended to hurt Miss Froy. Iris blacks out once she boards the train and the ‘lady’ helps her. Once she regains her consciousness, both women go to the cafeteria on the train for a cup of tea.  After a short nap in her coupe, when Iris opens her eyes Miss Froy has just vanished. The real mystery begins when the magician and family travelling with her in their coupe denies there was any old woman.

To Iris’ shock, her fellow passengers - the two gentlemen - Charters and Caldicott obsessed with Cricket, Mr Todhunter and Mrs Todhunter in fact, his mistress denies seeing any older woman with her though they have seen her. The denial is to due to several reasons - the first two just because they do not want to miss cricket and the second to avoid a possible scandal as they are involved in a clandestine relationship. Within a few hours into the journey, Gilbert with whom she had a ruckus in the previous night joins hands with Iris in search of the woman once he was sure she was not hallucinating.

To speak about the casting, it was perfect. Iris played by Margaret Lockwood and Gilbert by Michael Redgrave who were relatively unknown actors, then became International stars instantly once the movie was released. The chemistry between them was great. I fell in love with Miss Froy played by Dame Mae Witty, the moment I saw her on the screen.  Not for a single moment, I felt that the movie was shot 79 years ago. The emotions were universal and displayed well by the characters all through the movie that made me as a spectator to instantly connect with the character irrespective of being a foreigner.

The characters of cricket-loving Englishmen, Charters and Caldicott became so popular as comedians that other writers and directors included these two characters in some of their films.

Humour was displayed brilliantly, especially in the scene when Iris and Gilbert come across a dingy room which supposedly belongs to the magician who was travelling with Iris in her coupe. The fight then ensues is utterly humorous and the actors did it perfectly without overdoing it.

The project, at the outset, was initiated under the name ‘The Lost Lady’ directed by Roy William Neil. But it had to be shelved as the Yugoslavian police accidentally discovered that they were not portrayed in the film in a positive way. This happened when the crew were in Yugoslavia for the shoot. Later, Hitchcock took up the project, which became an instant. The only thing which I did not understand was the scene where a hand comes from the behind and strangles a singer who was singing a song which the Miss Froy was listening from her room.

Before I conclude, I would add that like most of his several films, he had a cameo appearance in this movie too.

-  Shalet Jimmy