A review of the new film version of “Rebecca”

If you’re going to remake a classic movie, you need a lot of confidence and talent and perhaps a new angle.

English novelist Daphne du Maurier wrote the famous “Rebecca”, published in 1938, and Alfred Hitchcock directed the film version of 1940 which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. It was an impressive cast: Laurence Olivier as wealthy widower Maximilian de Winter, Joan Fontaine as his new second wife, and Judith Anderson as the domineering housekeeper Mrs. Danvers.

This 2020 version simply lacks the same star power. Director Ben Wheatley is no Hitchcock, most of his previous work being for television, and the ballroom sequence in particular is rather histrionic. American Armie Hammer was presumably cast as Maximilian in order to make the movie more marketable to US audiences, while Lily James as the ingénue does her best but was probably cast to win over younger viewers.

Where the remake scores over the original is in the sets and settings. Hitchcock shot his version in California, whereas Wheatley – reflecting the English location of the novel – gives us some wonderful locations in Dorset and Hertfordshire for the stately home of Manderlay and in Devon and Cornwall for the coastal sequences. Also Kristin Scott Thomas is chillingly wonderful as Mrs Danvers.

Released online at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has closed most cinemas and postponed many other films, the new “Rebecca” is worth watching but no challenge to the 1940 classic.


 




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