Rebecca

REBECCA           B            
USA  (131 mi)  1940  d:  Alfred Hitchcock

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
 
—The Idea of Order at Key West, Wallace Stevens, 1934

Hitchcock spent the first seven years in Hollywood as an employee of David O. Selznick, both admirers, by the way, of Cecil B. DeMille.  On Hitchcock’s first film REBECCA, a sumptuous melodrama and painful study in guilt and anxiety, exploring themes of love, class, deception, fear, obsession and power, there’s little Hitchcockian suspense, but plenty of psychological elements at play from a haunted house, an unseen character, and in the conflicting personalities, with one continually fumbling about completely petrified of the other.  Selznick controlled the script, edited the film, ordered retakes, re-recorded most of the dialogue, and in some cases directed scenes himself, to the point where many critics believe the film is substandard to Hitchcock’s earlier British work, and Hitchcock himself is quoted in the infamous 1962 interview with François Truffaut, “Well, it’s not a Hitchcock picture.”  The exception is a single scene that has Hitchcock’s imprint all over it, the moment the disturbed housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson, Hitchcock’s only lesbian character) shows the new Mrs. de Winter (Joan Fontaine) Rebecca’s bedroom.  Here Hitchcock evokes a terrifying fusion of sex and death in a thinly veiled fantasy conjuring up the dead with Rebecca watching over her husband in bed with his new wife.  It’s a startling moment that offers a hint of what might have been if the director was under less interference.  In Hitchcock’s mind, it’s a film that got away, not really holding together well, feeling painfully uneven, not a work he’s particularly proud of, but it’s a film with cinematic force and ideas, where much of his subsequent work is haunted by a similar Gothic imagination, including one of his next films Suspicion (1943) working with the same lead actress, where she may be even more terrified while winning the Academy Award for Best Actress.  Perhaps even more important is the groundwork the film lays for what is arguably Hitchcock’s greatest work, Vertigo (1958), a film of intense personal devastation and lost love, where the ghosts of the dead rise from their graves and wreak havoc on the living, one of the preeminent films about obsession.  Billed as a successor to the epic GONE WITH THE WIND (1939), Selznick was completing work on that film as he began casting for this new film, where the competition for the leading role was similar to Selznick's search for the perfect Scarlett O'Hara.  Fontaine competed against Vivien Leigh in both films, and while Leigh eventually won out as Scarlett, Fontaine was chosen to star in Hitchcock’s film.  Lead actor Laurence Olivier had just married Vivien Leigh at the time and was disappointed when she did not get the role, so he treated Joan Fontaine horribly, believing she was inexperienced and wrong for the part.  When Hitchcock found out that Fontaine was shaken up by her rude and belittling treatment, he told her that everyone on the set hated her, causing her even greater stress and discomfort, exactly what Hitchcock wanted from her performance.  Interesting that the only Hitchcock film to ever win an Academy Award, only four were ever nominated, the other three are Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1943), and SPELLBOUND (1946), is one told from a woman’s point of view, perhaps the ultimate irony considering the director’s reputation for male domination. 

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again... I came upon it suddenly; the approach masked by the unnatural growth of a vast shrub that spread in all directions... There was Manderley, our Manderley, secretive and silent as it had always been, the gray stone shining in the moonlight of my dream, the mullioned windows reflecting the green lawns and terrace.  Time could not wreck the perfect symmetry of those walls, nor the site itself, a jewel in the hollow of a hand.

 
Based on Daphne du Maurier’s much beloved 1938 gothic romance novel, described as a picturization of a literary work, the opening lines from an unknown narrator have an almost ethereal storybook quality, where a giant mansion looms off in the distance, seen through a canopy of trees rising out of a gloomy fog, where the locked iron gate recalls Xanadu from Orson Welles’ CITIZEN KANE (1941) made the following year.  The thematic use of the letter “R” seen throughout the film to indicate the belongings of Rebecca, which have the effect of branding these objects, is also reminiscent of the giant letter “K” for Charles Foster Kane.  What’s immediately apparent is the British influence of the film, as it’s completely a British picture, where the du Maurier story, the actors, including a group that relocated to Hollywood, and a similarly relocated director are all British, complete with manners of etiquette and British accents, where the couple meets, surprisingly enough, in Monte Carlo.  Joan Fontaine is in her first starring role and Hitchcock uses that to showcase the character’s vulnerability and at times her frustrating naiveté as a shy young woman whose name, significantly enough, is never revealed, overshadowed by the nonstop conversation of her overbearing employer, Mrs. Van Hopper (Florence Bates), who speaks endlessly about aristocratic gossip and whatnot, and is bored to tears that no one of significance happens to be at the hotel.  When she happens upon an aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier), she literally pounces on him, but he steers clear of her, keeping his eyes on her quiet, young companion before making a hasty exit.  Their early courtship takes place under the guise of tennis lessons, with Mrs. Hopper conveniently ill and confined to her bed, where Fontaine is literally swept off her feet by picturesque drives along the sea, where it’s obvious the more elegantly sophisticated Maxim enjoys the fact she hasn’t been stained by the upper-class air of pretense that surrounds his world, yet she’s a fragile stranger in a strange land who looks like she could fall apart at any minute.  All apprehensive eyebrows and second-guessing, Fontaine shines because she naturally exudes a quality that she herself seems unaware of, where she’s completely caught off guard when he proposes, as is the innocently deceived Mrs. Hopper, who all along continued to think that she was the object of everyone’s attention.   The rapturous entrance into Manderlay is like being transported into another world, where the newly titled Mrs. de Winter is a name she has to grow into, as she hasn’t a clue what to expect from this seemingly royal household, where the introduction to dozens of servants leaves her a bit bewildered and overwhelmed.  Maxim, on the other hand, immediately falls into a lifetime of routine, making little effort to understand the needs of his wife. 
 
While the film may make some faint attempt to explore contrasting social class, it’s largely dismissed by the continued arrogance of Maxim, who is simply a male version of Mrs. Van Hopper, someone so caught up in the aristocratic world of having everything at his disposal that they were born to believe the whole world revolves around them.  Accordingly, Olivier’s brooding performance is emotionally cold and not very sympathetic, where the audience quickly loses interest in his mood swings, attentive for a brief moment, but angrily dismissive the next.  Instead, it’s the introduction to the sinister housekeeper Mrs. Danver (Judith Anderson) that takes center stage, who appears like an apparition, where darkness simply surrounds her very essence, like a hanging cloud, as she expresses a cool and sneering detachment to the core.  While Mrs. de Winter tries to be polite and friendly, she is met with nothing but disdain and contempt.  Without a word from her husband, all she starts hearing about from the hired help is the first Mrs. de Winter, the impeccable Rebecca, where her name echoes through the cavernous rooms like a lingering spirit, as she apparently meant everything to Maxim, ultra sophisticated, a beguiling beauty, the victim of an unfortunate boating accident a year ago, where even in her ghostly absence, she continues to reign as the lady of the house.  Whispers are heard throughout the staff reminding the second Mrs. de Winter that Maxim was so distraught that many felt he would never recover afterwards.  What’s curious about all this talk is not only how it’s affecting the second Mrs. de Winter, making her feel inept and incapable of filling Rebecca’s shoes, but also how an unseen character is suddenly dominating and hounding her life, becoming the major focus of the film, as she was in the novel, without ever making an appearance, where her presence hovers over every inch of Manderlay, like a nightmarish dream.  Fontaine is excellent as a character continually knocked off balance, where she’s constantly ill at ease, out of her depth, made to feel inadequate in this social setting, yet she remains genuine and a pure spirit, earnestly attempting to gain a footing, both with her husband and the legions of domestic helpers, but she’s continually undermined by the devious actions of Mrs. Danver, whose dark presence dominates every scene she’s in, and whose evil intentions feel little more than wicked vindictiveness. 
 

As a result, it’s the completely implied lesbian relationship between Mrs. Danver and Rebecca that is so captivating, filled with mystifying sexual overtones that match du Maurier’s own bisexuality, where the housekeeper has preserved Rebecca’s room exactly as it was, like a shrine, but it’s off limits to the rest of the household, remaining a curiously unexplored secret place where interest is only magnified by the power of her protective force, with the mysterious room guarded by Jasper the dog, the keeper of the flame, so to speak.  When Mrs. Danver finally discovers the second Mrs. de Winter alone in Rebecca’s room, always sneaking up on her when she least expects it, Danver makes it clear just how ferociously devoted she was to her dead mistress, describing in intimate detail how she used to draw her bath, help her undress for bed, comb her hair, and listen to her talk about the affairs of the day, suggesting they had no secrets from each other, sexual or otherwise, feeling the delicateness of her silk negligee, stroking it with her hand, rubbing her fur coat on the new Mrs. de Winter’s face, the ultimate act of rebuff and humiliation, suggesting she could never live up to the beauty and sophistication of Rebecca, where there’s a chilling attempt to coerce the new despised mistress of the house into suicide.  Perhaps the one item Mrs. Danver most personally associates with Rebecca is a hand designed embroidered cloth she made for her with a monogrammed letter “R” that’s placed over her pillow on her bed.  Equally intimidating for the second Mrs. de Winter is Rebecca’s monogrammed address book and stationary, where everywhere she turns, the presence of Rebecca is there staring her in the face, where she comes to believe that her husband is still madly in love with his deceased wife.  When the new Mrs. de Winter mentions her suspicions to her husband, also the hatred emanating from Mrs. Danver, he laughingly dismisses this like a silly joke, where he doesn’t take her seriously and continually treats her like a little girl, calling her his “little fool” or “my good child,” where her innocence is something he routinely dominates.  There’s always a gaping emotional distance between them, where he’s old enough to be her father as he simply dismisses her every effort, but once she matures later in the film, it’s questionable whether there are any signs of romance left.  One of the more interesting scenes is seeing the couple as their marriage is falling apart watching home movie footage of their first weeks together when they fell in love, their ghoulish faces illuminated in an enveloping darkness, a startling contrast of emotions.         
 
It’s not until late in the film that we learn the true story of Maxim’s relationship with Rebecca, an openly confessional outpouring that comes after her body has been found on a capsized boat under the sea, where an inquest is held, as this conflicts with Maxim’s earlier identification of a washed up body one year ago.  George Sanders plays a morally dubious car salesman with cynical ambitions to blackmail Maxim (a good man to blackmail, one might add), as he believes Rebecca was murdered.  This roving court investigation slows down the pace of the film, which actually drags near the end, adding many unnecessary secondary characters, which only prolongs the inevitable, where the film cleans up the darker intentions of the book.  Nonetheless, Mrs. Danver takes matters into her own hands, becoming more deliriously mad than ever, burning down Manderlay much as Selznick set fire to Tara in his previous film, both melodramatic soap operas winning Academy Awards for Best Film.  In an unusual move, Selznick also gave Orson Welles permission to do a radio adaptation of Rebecca for his Mercury Theatre of the Air, coming on the heels of his infamous production of The War of the Worlds, guaranteed to generate free publicity for the upcoming film.  It was Welles’ reading of the film that assured Selznick to keep the novel’s first person woman’s narration.  Selznick previously asked du Maurier to write the screenplay, but she refused, hating what Hitchcock did to the screen version of JAMAICA INN (1939), while the third du Maurier book adapted into a Hitchcock film was The Birds (1963).  It was director George Cukor that suggested Selnick test Joan Fontaine, who impressed him with her work on THE WOMEN (1939).  With that, Selnick’s first choice for the role dropped out, Olivia de Havilland, Fontaine’s sister who refused to test for the role.  Biographer David Thomson suggested Selznick actually fell in love with Fontaine, writing her poetry and attempting to interest her in an affair, but she was already happily involved with her future husband, British actor Brian Aherne.  Since 1936, when actors in supporting roles were first introduced, REBECCA remains the only Best Picture winner that received no Academy Awards for writing, acting, or directing. 

Note – Shortly after the 2-hour mark in the film, Hitchcock, in a hat and overcoat, can be seen in a brief appearance passing by a policeman on the street, walking next to an outdoor phone booth where George Sanders is making a call.

Suspicion

SUSPICION               B+                  

USA  (99 mi)  1941  d:  Alfred Hitchcock

Truffaut: “…you referred to Suspicion and said that the producers would have objected to Cary Grant being the killer.  If I understand correctly, you’d have preferred that he be the guilty one.”

Hitchcock:  “Well, I’m not too pleased with the way Suspicion ends.  I had something else in mind.”

One of the earlier Hitchcock films to explore the subject of hysteria, which, when mixed with murder, always adds a touch of lingering doubt where illusion and reality are often confused.  Hitchcock seems to relish these kinds of stories with perfectly innocent and ordinary people suddenly struck by the idea of murder lurking in their midst, where everything is not as it seems, drawing inferences as to the reasons why, where the tiniest hints or clues grow increasingly large, until eventually they are suffocating and gasping for air on mere ideas and suppositions.  Shot during the middle of his espionage phase, from THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934) until NOTORIOUS (1946), the director made a trio of romantic psychological thrillers about naïve and less than suspecting women falling for shady and darkly disturbing men with something to hide in REBECCA (1940), SUSPICION (1941), and Shadow of a Doubt (1943).  Like the latter film which opens with The Merry Widow Waltz, Hitchcock uses another waltz musical theme, initially heard with romantic inclinations at a huntsman’s ball, Johann Strauss, Jr. - Vienna Blood Waltz, Op. 354 ... YouTube (2:23), but later it becomes a trigger for suspected foulplay.  While the original novel Before the Fact, by Francis Iles, is much darker in tone, adapted by Samson Raphaelson, Hitchcock’s personal assistant Joan Harrison and his wife Alma Reville, much has been made of the studio’s insistence to alter the ending, substantially changing the outcome, offering a lighter and more hopeful world of optimistic possibilities instead of concluding with a corpse and the damning evidence of a murderous psychopath on the loose.  Hitchcock obviously preferred the latter, but this was his first time working with Cary Grant, already considered too popular a star and the biggest star Hitchcock had ever worked with at this point, so RKO studios insisted he be a hero instead of the villain, culminating with a substitute ending.  Later Grant and Hitchcock collaborated on NOTORIOUS (1946), TO CATCH A THIEF (1955), and NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959).         

Oddly, this was Hitchcock’s second Hollywood movie, yet for all practical purposes this is a British film made in Hollywood, where the actors, the setting, and the overall atmosphere are decidedly British.  Initially the tone is more of a screwball comedy, where Cary Grant as Johnnie seems to operate outside normal social boundaries, where right off the bat he’s a bit of a scam artist trying to use a 3rd class train ticket for a 1st class seat, where sitting across from him is Joan Fontaine as Lina, much more reserved and proper hiding behind her glasses, but she recognizes his picture in the social columns, as he’s apparently a handsome and eligible bachelor, usually with several girls on his arm.  When she runs into him again, seemingly no accident, as she’s the daughter of a wealthy general, he sweeps her off her feet in no time with his playful rakish charm, where despite her father’s warnings that he could be a fortune hunter, she decides to defy her family’s heeding in hopes of getting away from their restricting confinement.  Despite her overprotected and well-behaved demeanor, she’s smitten by his liberated and carefree manner, not to mention his looks, so after an enchanted evening of dancing at the Hunt Club Ball, they elope the next day, where Johnny assumes her wealthy family will cover the cost, as they honeymoon in extravagance, not to mention the luxurious home Johnnie has picked out for them to live.  Always on different wavelengths, Lina is shocked to discover Johnnie hasn’t a penny to his name, that he survives on borrowing from others, living life recklessly as a compulsive gambler, where he’ll throw his life savings on a whim at the track.  Even though Lina remains in denial for a good portion of the film, the audience quickly learns Johnnie’s a compulsive liar and a thief, an amoral man capable of doing just about anything to get what he wants, living behind a pack of lies, where his story often changes by the second.  For Lina, order and morality are so ingrained in her upbringing, she remains naïve to all of Johnny’s dastardly deeds, while the man seemingly hasn’t a care in the world.  Hitchcock leaves plenty of hints for the audience, however, never offering any proof, though it’s clear Johnny is something of a scoundrel and a cheat, and perhaps, as cleverly discovered in a Scrabble like board game, capable of “murder.”                

Like Shadow of a Doubt, this is a dark comedy that relishes its little wickedness, opening in near farce, but the mood of frivolity suddenly turns darker with the arrival of one of Johnnie’s friends, Nigel Bruce as Beaky, a kind of dim-witted but jovial fellow who knows the true colors of his friend, a side seldom seen by his new wife, who’s always the last to know, discovering Johnnie quit his job and embezzled funds, pawned family heirlooms, and spent the proceeds at the race track.  It’s never explained how they continue to live in this outrageously lavish country estate on no income coming in, but it’s certain Johnnie has no intention of working for a living.  When Lina’s father suddenly dies of a stroke, Johnnie’s the picture of disappointment at the reading of the will, discovering Daddy didn’t leave much, never trusting his marital intentions.  Instead he develops an incessant fascination with the local murder mystery writer, Auriol Lee, literally pumping her for ways to commit murder, hoping to discover the perfect untraceable poison, where a close up shot of the Cornish hen they’re eating suddenly looms ominously over the dinner proceedings.  When Johnnie has to step up and earn a living, he rudely berates his wife for interfering in his business when he and Beaky develop a little real estate scheme that seems doomed from the outset, eyeing an undeveloped oceanfront location called Tangmere-by-the-sea, which is actually shot near Carmel, south of San Francisco, supposedly financed by Beaky’s lifetime savings.  When Beaky suddenly turns up dead under mysterious circumstances, Lina begins to shudder with horror and disbelief that her husband may have murdered him, thinking she could be next, literally fearing for her life, especially when he shows up without a word after going missing for awhile.  Like Marnie (1964), another film about a pathological liar, Hitchcock resorts to German Expressionist imagery, where Johnnie is projected as a shadow on the wall, while Lina is seen hovering in fear in the living room, where shadowed outlines on the floor reveal what appears to be a web or a cage, where she’s helplessly locked inside.  One of the more memorable images is a ghoulish image of Johnnie stepping out of the dark carrying a glass of milk up the stairs, where Hitchcock has the milk illuminated with a light bulb in the glass, drawing attention to the poisonous possibilities.  The finale takes place in a frantic car scene with the cliffs lurking below, where certain death or doom feels all but certain.  Joan Fontaine won the Best Actress Academy Award for her performance of a woman losing her psychological bearings, the only such Oscar for a performance in a Hitchcock film.  Not for the fainthearted, the clever and lighthearted humor of the opening turns into a threatening and suffocating atmosphere of menacing dread and foreboding, perhaps Hitchcock's definitive comment on marriage.       

Damsels in Distress

DAMSELS IN DISTRESS                  B                     

USA  (99 mi)  2011  d:  Whit Stillman               Official site

The past is gone, so we might as well romanticize it
—Charlie Walker/ Fred Packenstacker (Adam Brody)

Judging by the sparse audience for this theatrical release, people have no idea anymore what to expect from films unless it fits a specific type of movie where they can conveniently be categorized and shelved in video stores under drama, foreign, popular, comedy, adventure, children, etc.  As someone who sees a lot of art films, perhaps it’s easier to come to grips with a film like this that chisels out its own space in the cinema universe, perhaps best seen at a film festival where the stylistic artificiality would stand out, as there’s something clearly unique about writer/director Whit Stillman’s running dialog in this film, which is playfully fun, almost lightheaded, yet filled with literary commentary as if reading lines from a book.  Greta Gerwig is the indie *it* girl, seen here as Violet, an over-the-edge, slightly demented, but overly motivated college girl who insists her life be more than the insipidly vapid college experience that typically exists for all too many.  Stillman himself graduated from Harvard University in the early 70’s, while his father was a classmate of JFK at Harvard, ultimately serving in the Commerce Department under Kennedy.  Despite the prestige attached to such a highly influential university, there is also a layer of ivory tower inaccessibility attached to the experience which may seem completely unrealistic, where the make-believe world of students is a facsimile of the real thing.  This film reflects that gulf in reality, using a highly exaggerated sense of wit and sarcasm that uses caricature instead of authenticity in the story’s character development, where women are aspiring social workers hell-bent on fixing the obvious flaws of the Neanderthal caveman aspects of the male species.  Using a highly unusual cast of characters, they come down to two distinct social groups, the female damsels in distress, and the interchangeable males causing the distress.  While attending a preppy East Coast college, four girls led by Violet, each with floral names, Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke), Heather (Carrie MacLemore), and Lily (Analeigh Tipton), comprise the protagonists who run the Suicide Prevention Center (where the word “Prevention” keeps falling off), while their male counterparts are Frank (Ryan Metcalf), Xavier (Hugo Becker), Charlie (Adam Brody), and Thor (Billy Magnussen), with plenty of colorful side characters. 

The gist of the film is that the experience, despite all the obvious advantageous opportunities, is an unhappy one, where characters continually fall into easily recognizable social traps where it’s easy to dispense advice to others, but then get down in the dumps when it happens to you.  Violet has this idealized sense that the world can be saved by simple acts of human kindness, and then when that fails, she has nothing left to fall back upon and heads into a tailspin of depression.  There’s the always interesting game of musical chairs where the girls seem to continually be switching guys with one another, getting hurt when the boneheaded actions of the guy sends them into a whirlwind of confusion.  Amusingly, when Violet chooses to utilize the benefits of her own suicide treatment plan and enroll in a tap-dancing therapy program, she’s told by one of the participants (who’s too depressed to dance) that she doesn’t qualify unless she’s been clinically diagnosed with depression.  Violet thought she could avoid all the heartbreak by developing a surefire plan to only date guys who are neither handsome nor intelligent, so the screen is filled with dweebs for guys who are so backward they still belong to Roman instead of Greek fraternities.  The continual dumbness of some of the guys can get a little irritating, but let’s face it, movies often pretend only guys with British accents attend preppy East coast schools.  Even Violet is not all what she seems and is a little bit of a fruitcake herself.  All of this is a satiric swipe at being cool, where this fearsome foursome, whose project is to improve the lives of others, are something of an eccentric lot themselves, where Lily’s defiance of groupspeak with her insistence that she wants to be normal comes across as a defiant and subversive act, like a revolt from the conformity of the pack.     

But it’s Violet’s idiosyncratic character that really excels, as she refuses to get mad at her rivals, or even her double-crossing boyfriends, always finding a convenient rationalization as a silver lining to excuse their dubious intentions, where she instead takes out her frustrations with her love to dance.  And if truth be told, the dancing sequences are among the most appealing in the film, not because they’re so choreographically complex, but because they generate fun and an infectious enthusiasm.  These scenes elevate the spirits of the participants, especially Violet who seems to secretly crave the idea of turning this film into a musical.  At one point, she’s caught up in a country music line dance that couldn’t be more exquisite in its simplicity, while in another she’s in rapturous delight recalling the breezy Hollywood romance of Fred Astaire and Joan Fontaine in “Things Are Looking Up” from A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS (1937) Stray Moments: A Damsel in Distress (1937) - YouTube (4:14).  There is a period of adjustment at the film’s outset where the audience has to adjust to the strangely archaic use of language, which may initially send some to the exits for the sheer off its rocker, absurdity element, but one has to acknowledge the clever wit behind the film’s broad-based, dark comedy, not the least of which is the retro look of the 50’s where dance crazes felt like a novel invention in rebellious defiance against the conformity of the era.  Underneath the artificial tone, there remains a free-spirited EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY (1988) subversive voice clearly reveling at this delightful social exposé of the college dynamic where little time is spent in the classroom and every minute of every day is spent analyzing and overanalyzing each minute detail of one’s chaotic personal lives, which for the first time in one’s carefully controlled childhood the multitude of choices can be simply overwhelming and the experience nothing less than liberating.