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Tagline: The shadow of this woman darkened their love. (more)
Plot Outline: When a naive young woman marries a rich widower, they settle in his gigantic mansion, where she finds the memory of the first wife maintaining a grip on her husband and the servants. (more)(view trailer)
User Comments:
A classic Hitchcock, but a hard one for me to review.
(more)
Date: 17 July 2003 Summary: A classic Hitchcock, but a hard one for me to review.
***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS***
Black and white, award-winning REBECCA is a fine, engrossing film. It
starts
with "Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again."
I saw it on DVD, the recently issued special edition, borrowed from my
local library. For me is was an opportunity to see Laurence Olivier as
'Maxim' de Winter and Joan Fontaine as the "new" Mrs de Winter who has no
first name, two great actors that I knew virtually nothing of. The first
Mrs
had died about a year before this film begins, in southern France, where
the
young lady sees Max on the edge of a cliff apparently thinking of jumping,
and we don't know why.
some SPOILERS follow, read further at your own risk, because these are
comments for my recollection.
In Monte Carlo Max courts the young (early 20s)woman quickly, asks her to
stay and marry him rather than go to New York with the old woman she
assists. She does, is taken home to Manderly which is his home, a large
mansion/castle with servants. (The film Gosford Park is good to help
understand the service structure involved here.) She is young, timid, and
at
a loss for how to be "Mrs de Winter" in this setting.
She gradually learns about the deceased Mrs and finds that in most
respects
she was not very well liked. As it turns out Max had found out she was
having an affair with her cousin, thought she was pregnant with her
cousin's
child, and instead of living with the knowledge that his fortune would be
inherited by a bastard child, he killed her and sank her in her boat,
identifying a different found body as his wife's. The new Mrs de Winter
was
much more what he had in mind for a companion.
Things take a twist when the sunken boat is found, and containing the real
deceased Mrs. An inquest reveals she was not pregnant, but was dying from
cancer, which gave her a motive for the suicide that Max claimed. Max is
off
the hook, but he had told his new Mrs the truth and that would be
theirs.
Good, engrossing movie, but for my tastes don't see why it gets such great
respect as a classic. I guess I have a problem with people getting off
with
bad things, similar to the story in CHINATOWN.
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