REBECCA - Alfred Hitchcock (1940)
Hitch’s first Hollywood production is a whiz bang psychological gothic drama with a smidge of inverted whodunnit mystery and the specter of a ghost story tossed in for good measure.
Teeming with a fantastic cast, both the leads are fantastic, but the supporting cast is filled with plenty of scene stealing goodness, too!
The film is also rife with Hitchcock’s signature look (great lighting and use of shadows, immaculate staging and set design, etc.).
The story and pacing are excellent, as well, but it’s Hitchcock’s mastery of creating tension and uncomfortable moments that linger and get under your skin which really propels the film; there are several scenes where the viewer easily guesses the outcome, but Hitch strings us along with so much tension and anticipation that it boils over into a kind of anxiety as we wait for it all to unravel.
A number of critics have made a big deal about some potentially subversive lesbian undertones, but I didn’t see them in that way upon my initial viewing. I found the character in question to be creepy in the classically gothic manner, but also to be sad and unhappy, if not jealous; it just proves that one can interpret a film in a number of ways.
Other critics have pointed out the this film may very well have influenced Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. That I can see to some degree.
In the end, this is just a damn entertaining and compellingly immersive motion picture.
FYI, don’t let the trailer fool you as the film is far more intense and mysterious than it implies.
