Rebecca won Best Picture, is one of the AFI’s 100 Years, 100 Thrills picks and was Jenny’s pick for Hitchcock Month at Flick Buddies.
I’d read the book, and the movie follows the book pretty faithfully. (I think—I read the book a couple years ago, but I didn’t have any moment during the movie where it was like, “Wait, THAT didn’t happen in the book.”)
The book and movie center around a young woman, an orphan, who is a paid companion (about the best work she can have, given her station in life). She meets Maxim de Winter, a fairly attractive widower and they get married after a relationship that redefines “whirlwind courtship.” Maxim’s very wealthy and so she goes from having nothing at all to living in a house that has servants and lets you say things like, “Yes, we are living in the east wing.”
Maxim’s first wife, Rebecca, was universally beloved and so the new wife has to figure out how to make her own way in the house while coming out of Rebecca’s shadow.
For me, the worst thing about the book and the movie is that we never learn the name of the second Mrs. de Winter. (Which is sort of the point, I guess; she is a little bit generic.)
The movie is creepy, especially once we start to spend time with the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers. She is usually called “Danny,” so you may think that she’s friendly and informal. You would be wrong.
Very fun movie although it isn’t a very Hitchcock movie.
[...] The Great Ziegfeld, The Life of Emile Zola, You Can’t Take It With You, Gone With The Wind, Rebecca, How Green Was My Valley, Mrs. Miniver, Casablanca, Going My Way, The Lost Weekend, The Best Years [...]