Rebecca (1940)
Ah, to see another great movie from those few years when Hollywood peaked, when that combination of art, freshness, and sheer collaborative talent combined over and over. I'm talking from Gone with the Wind to Casablanca, 1939 to 1942. Throw in any number of truly staggering movies in the stretch--Citizen Kane for starters--and we have to almost expect Alfred Hitchcock to fit right in. With Rebecca he does. It's another perfect movie.
Daphne Du Maurier's book of the same title is a great read, something short of a literary classic but something better than a mere best-seller. I read it recently, and was completely transported into a land of subtle drama. That sounds like an oxymoron, but when you see this movie you'll notice how people act with restraint, with glances, with quiet actions, and yet achieve a grandiose, dramatic effect that tears your heart out. It's an archetypal story about a girl who seems to have a dream come true marrying a charming and very wealthy man.
But of course, there are skeletons in this man's closet, and Lawrence Olivier plays the inner struggle of Maxim close to the chest. More openly troubled by events, and so sympathetic your heart jumps out of your chest, is the girl, his wife, played by Joan Fontaine. Now here is a performance that is just incredible. She even changes her presence as her innocence slowly bleeds away from start to finish. If the two of them never quite have sparks fly, they're not supposed to.
But Hitchcock has done more than chosen a great, cinematic novel and two amazing actors (as well as a flawless supporting cast). With the most romantic, lush sets, delirious lights, and rich, layered photography, all fluidly combined to create scenes so beautiful you can almost taste it, the director has shown, again, that he understands the intuitive power of the cinema. It isn't the outward brilliance of any one scene or shot, or any one conversation that the camera follows invisibly, or any flinging of the curtains to reveal only more fog or sheer obscurity. It's the pacing and sequence of these moments that sucks you into the world and won't let you go.
Well, it's no surprise, maybe, that Rebecca won best picture and best cinematography at the Oscars. And it was up against The Letter, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Philadelphia Story, all of which are more proof that the movies of this period are a zenith of a certain kind of Hollywood. The studio system. (Yes, there are hundreds of other great movies from other years, but I'm not really trying to make my case here.) Hitchcock never won an Oscar for best director (neither did Welles), but he could have here without fault. As much as this is just a movie to get lost in and enjoy, it's also a movie you could watch over and over and study.
Ah, to see another great movie from those few years when Hollywood peaked, when that combination of art, freshness, and sheer collaborative talent combined over and over. I'm talking from Gone with the Wind to Casablanca, 1939 to 1942. Throw in any number of truly staggering movies in the stretch--Citizen Kane for starters--and we have to almost expect Alfred Hitchcock to fit right in. With Rebecca he does. It's another perfect movie.
Daphne Du Maurier's book of the same title is a great read, something short of a literary classic but something better than a mere best-seller. I read it recently, and was completely transported into a land of subtle drama. That sounds like an oxymoron, but when you see this movie you'll notice how people act with restraint, with glances, with quiet actions, and yet achieve a grandiose, dramatic effect that tears your heart out. It's an archetypal story about a girl who seems to have a dream come true marrying a charming and very wealthy man.
But of course, there are skeletons in this man's closet, and Lawrence Olivier plays the inner struggle of Maxim close to the chest. More openly troubled by events, and so sympathetic your heart jumps out of your chest, is the girl, his wife, played by Joan Fontaine. Now here is a performance that is just incredible. She even changes her presence as her innocence slowly bleeds away from start to finish. If the two of them never quite have sparks fly, they're not supposed to.
But Hitchcock has done more than chosen a great, cinematic novel and two amazing actors (as well as a flawless supporting cast). With the most romantic, lush sets, delirious lights, and rich, layered photography, all fluidly combined to create scenes so beautiful you can almost taste it, the director has shown, again, that he understands the intuitive power of the cinema. It isn't the outward brilliance of any one scene or shot, or any one conversation that the camera follows invisibly, or any flinging of the curtains to reveal only more fog or sheer obscurity. It's the pacing and sequence of these moments that sucks you into the world and won't let you go.
Well, it's no surprise, maybe, that Rebecca won best picture and best cinematography at the Oscars. And it was up against The Letter, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Philadelphia Story, all of which are more proof that the movies of this period are a zenith of a certain kind of Hollywood. The studio system. (Yes, there are hundreds of other great movies from other years, but I'm not really trying to make my case here.) Hitchcock never won an Oscar for best director (neither did Welles), but he could have here without fault. As much as this is just a movie to get lost in and enjoy, it's also a movie you could watch over and over and study.