A REVIEW OF THE FILM “REBECCA” BY ALFRED HITCHCOCK

by Hassie Canela, June 2014

900 words

3 pages

essay

“Master of suspense”. “King of horror”. “Pioneer of many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres” (Mogg, 2010). These epithets come to mind any time when we hear the name of one of the most outstanding film directors in the history of filmmaking. In many movies filmed by Alfred Hitchcock can be observed something common, some elusive elements that unite these movies, make them unique, and allow distinguishing Hitchcock’s pictures from the other director’s films. All these factors compose the film director’s author’s style. His style is manifested in the fact that certain plot motives, the way of stuff presentation to the viewers, shooting techniques, acting types are frequently repeated in the pictures of him.

Alfred Hitchcock is called a master of suspense, which is a growing tensed expectation, and this is not by coincidence. The suspense scenes are invariable attribute of the majority of his movies. He created them brilliantly using cinematic techniques like editing, the shooting angles, close-ups, unusual foreshortenings, etc. Thus Alfred Hitchcock’s movies are based on suspense and fear. His characters are people got caught in the trap of circumstances, and the relationship of a man and a woman is a quite cynical view on the romance. “His best movies were meticulously orchestrated nightmares of peril and pursuit relieved by unexpected comic ironies, absurdities and anomalies” (Flint, 1980).

In the given work we are dealing with “Rebecca” which is considered to be one of the most remarkable movies filmed by this eminent film director. The plot of the movie is based on the eponymous book by Daphne du Maurier. A young naïve girl (Joan Fontaine) gets acquainted with a wealthy widower Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) during her vacation at one of European resorts. Maxim makes this cute girl a proposal and takes her to his ancestral estate on the Cornish coast called Manderley. It is an old English castle that hides its own secrets. The fact is that several years ago previous lady de Winter died under mysterious circumstances and the servants especially Mrs Denvers still remember and love her. This bothers a new hostess estates a lot. Young lady de Winter gradually begins to lose her sense of self-identification turning into her predecessor who as she thinks was deeply loved by her husband. But even she can not suspect what secrets she tries to affect and how lord de Winter treated his first wife in fact. In the course are weird keys, odd strangers, ambiguous words overheard accidentally until the secret is revealed.

The distinctive feature of “Rebecca” is that it was the first movie filmed by Alfred Hitchcock when he started to appeal to the inner world of a character psychology, to develop deep and strong-willed characters as if changing the line of sight from external questions to internal …

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