This weekend, we watched Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca,” the only film for which he won an Academy Award for Best Picture. It’s been several years since I first saw it and I’d forgotten a few of the details so it was nice to revisit it.
As with all films directed by Hitchcock, the story is more than it appears to be. It seems to be about a young woman and a recent widower who meet while abroad, marry and return to his estate where the young woman struggles in the shadow of Rebecca, the dead wife who still seems to have a hold on everyone who knew her.
We watched the film with our friend Leslie and although I believe she found it interesting, I suspected that she was getting a little bored, that is until a twist thrown in in the middle kept all of us riveted until the last frame. Hitchcock just sort of sneaks it up on you and suddenly you’re thinking,”What?? What?!” and the first half of the film suddenly becomes something slightly different than what you though it was. It always amazes me how one little bit of information can change the lenses through which we see things.
M. Night Shyamalan (director of “The Sixth Sense”) pays homage to Hitchocokian twists in all of his films, but no one does it like Mr. Hitchcock himself. If you like Shyamalan’s films, rent “Rebecca.” Besides, it’s worth the rental just to see Judith Anderson as the ultra-creepy Mrs. Danvers.
The way Hitchcock misleads his audience, and then reveals the truth about the events he has shown, is similar in Rebecca and Vertigo. Both films also have important sub-plots about morbid grief.