Ben Wheatley’s demystified Rebecca is a pale imitation of the Hitchcock classic
Film Reviews Movie Review
Note: The writer of this review watched Rebecca from home on a digital screener. Before making the decision to see it—or any other film—in a movie theater, please consider the health risks involved. Here’s an interview on the matter with scientific experts.
The dreamlike qualities of Daphne du Maurier’s 1930s bestseller Rebecca and its celebrated Alfred Hitchcock film adaptation are obvious even in a basic description of the premise. A nameless young woman meets an older, recently widowed aristocrat while working as a lady’s companion in Monte Carlo. After two weeks of romance, he marries her, and brings her to his estate, Manderley, where an entire wing has been preserved in the memory of his first wife, Rebecca. From the beginning, we know that Manderley is no more; it’s a ruin that is haunting the heroine as she starts to tell the story.
There’s an eventual twist (several, actually) that turns this perfectly distilled gothic fairy tale into a more conventional piece of early-20th-century suspense, with incriminating notes, doctors, and blackmail. But the arc remains one of lost innocence, beginning in romantic fantasy and ending deep into its era’s fondness for Freud. Hitchcock turned this into his first major work on the subject of morbid obsession (and the only one of his films to win an Oscar for Best Picture). Now, the English director Ben Wheatley has liberated it from those pesky ambiguities and turned it into an inane, leaden drama.
This Rebecca is billed as a new adaptation of the novel, but since the Hitchcock version is largely faithful to du Maurier, much of it plays like a scene-for-scene remake, with tweaks and additions to account for today’s apparently less adventurous tastes in old dark house stories. The first obvious change is that the unworldly and unnamed protagonist (Lily James) and the widowed Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer) are now basically the same age (though Hammer is actually older than Laurence Olivier was when he played the role in the Hitchcock version).
Their courtship unfolds more or less as before. They meet at a hotel while she is traveling with her employer, the unbearable grand dame Mrs. Van Hopper (Ann Dowd). Lunch in the hotel restaurant soon turns to daily sightseeing trips in Maxim’s Bentley. Although his wife has been dead for less than a year, Maxim proposes, and after an offscreen honeymoon, brings his new bride to Manderley. There, she soon encounters the story’s famous villain, the manipulative head housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (an icy Kristin Scott Thomas), who remains loyal to the previous mistress of the house.
Reminders of the beautiful and refined Rebecca seem to follow the second Mrs. de Winter (the only name ever given to the protagonist). In an effort to distinguish itself from previous versions—which include the Hitchcock film, two TV miniseries, and du Maurier’s own stage adaptation—this Rebecca has dressed its characters in the height of mid-1930s fashion; the formerly cobwebby untouched west wing of Manderley is now spotlessly clean and Art Deco. At one point, the heroine watches Maxim sleepwalk through its doors. The subtexts are now literal, which means that there aren’t any subtexts at all.
Nonetheless, the basic structure of the story is intact; some of its uncanniness even manages to survive Wheatley’s confused, unfocused direction. The filmmaker (who’s better known for the grotesque likes of Kill List, Free Fire, and A Field In England) can’t seem to decide whether he’s making an anonymous, corny prestige flick or simultaneously remaking both The Wicker Man and The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant. While his archly stylized mirror staging of the main character’s interactions with Mrs. Danvers and random inclusion of songs by the jazzy late ’60s and early ’70s folk-rock band Pentangle occasionally puncture the decorum, the only truly surprising thing about Rebecca is how tame it is, even when compared to an adaptation that had to change a major plot point to abide by the Production Code.
The screenplay (by Jane Goldman, Anna Waterhouse, and Joe Shrapnel) goes to some lengths to neuter the psychosexual complexes of the characters, and given that these complexes are most of the story, the film inevitably descends into incoherence once the question of what really happened to Rebecca is stated out loud. While Scott Thomas, Dowd, and Sam Riley (as Rebecca’s shady cousin, Jack Favell) get fun one-note roles, James and Hammer are largely tasked with looking unhappy in handsome clothes. Anyone who manages to invest in these characters will be rewarded with an egregious happy ending that has been tacked on the fiery conclusion—which, like everything else, has been wrung through the de-ambiguifier. Manderley is in part a state of mind. In this Rebecca, that state is exasperating boredom.
64 Comments
I don’t want to be the “they shouldn’t re-make such-and-such” guy but, dear Lord, did Hitchcock’s Rebecca not need a re-make.
Except for Carol Burnett’s “Rebecky”.
Well, yes — Carol Burnett’s version is always the exception that proves the rule.
I am happy to be that guy. If it’s a classic movie, don’t remake it! I’ll never understand the inclination. There is an endless supply of old movies with great ideas that never really had the budget or were poorly executed, or whatever, just begging for a remake. (Or they could just come up with original ideas.)
If you want to remake Hitchcock, remake To Catch A Thief so it doesn’t drag so damn much and has a protagonist who’s 50 percent less orange! Easy.
Oh boy, I agree. I love everybody involved, yet I’ve never actually been able to sit through this entire movie. It’s like a sleeping pill. An elegant and charming sleeping pill.
They can remake Jamaica Inn. No one has made a good version of that book. And it is a wild ride. And it has plenty of sexiness in it.
I always wonder when film makers willfully choose to invite comparisons by remaking a classic movie that is a classic for a very good reason.
Could be worse, Katmandu — could be a shot-for-shot remake of Hitchcock’s version.
Okay, that would be worse.You can call me Kat.
Okay, Kat — could be worse.Could also be much much better…and kinkier, too.
Speaking of, why isn’t Vince Vaughn in this?
A shot for shot remake. That would be psycho.
You said it!
Hence my diabolical ambition to remake one of cinema’s greatest premises let down by shaky executions: Weird Science!
In this case, at least, I assume some studio exec had to explain to his wife who this “Rebecca” was she kept overhearing him talk about, and this is the mere by-product of verisimilitude.
I just wanted this new adaptation to be horny. Is it horny?
Is “horny” the most embarrassing phrasing in Film Twitter? Other candidates include “baked in”, ‘in …” (whatever year it is), “have a lot of thoughts”, “the … of it all”, “re-litigate”.
I hope so too, it’s all it really needs to bring! I want Unfaithful level of horniness!
Well, the girl did down an enormous platter of oysters upon her first meeting with Maxim. Take that as you will. 😉
I think we all know there’s only one truly worthwhile adaptation of ‘Rebecca’:
I thought I’d seen all of Mitchell and Webb but I’ve never seen this sketch before. Thanks for the link.
I thought Ben Wheatley was a filmmaker with major potential after Kill List and Sightseers. While I appreciate him trying to branch out, each successive movie of his since those has diminished returns until that initial promise has been squandered.
I’ve only seen his High Rise and Free Fire and felt that both squandered good premises (and interesting source material in High Rise’s case). This one sounds dumb too. I’ve avoided Kill List because I find most horror too much for me, although I do have A Field In England on my list.
As a teen, I remember kinda liking the 90s UK TV version with Diana Rigg as Danvers (and I was a bit Du Maurier obsessed at the time), but this seemed ill conceived as soon as I heard who was directing it. And, yeah, usually with a classic novel or play it seems fair game to try a new adaptation of it—but it’s true that Hitchcock’s version was pretty faithful and it sure doesn’t seem like this brings anything new at all.
The big problem with Hitchcock’s version is the last act after the reveal, it just plods and plods. On the other hand, it could’ve been much worse — the Criterion DVD has a bunch of angry correspondence between Hitchcock and David O. Selznick, who wanted a very faithful adaptation and was not at all pleased with Hitchcock’s plan to have a wacky scene of people getting seasick in the early going. The original is still very good of course, Judith Anderson owns as Mrs. Danvers, but the book is eerier.
Ha, I’m glad you said that. I thought it was maybe just because I was really tired the last time I saw Rebecca, but yes, the final section until the big climax *is* kinda a slog. It is pretty amazing that Hitchcock made the film he did under Selznick (I guess many suggest it helped that Selznick was busy with Gone with the Wind for so much of it). Selznick did supervise the editing of course, but…
Like I always say, Hitchock didn’t make as good a movie as I would have. I was also, uh, let’s go with tired, when I watched Rebecca and I thought that was the problem with the last act, but it really is the movie and I think in particular the problem you get with a movie that by necessity is divorced from the claustrophobic first-person narration of the novel. Being stuck with Mrs. DeWinter II makes the trial stuff compelling (also, the original non-Hays reason for the trial stuff helps), outside of that you’re just watching an oddly tedious courtroom drama that has attached itself, remora-like, to this interesting gothic.
Mrs Danvers looks far too glam and modern in that picture. She looks like she’s telling her she’ll never make it in banking or something.
“you’ll never know how to route a number like I can Mrs. de Winters”
happy…ending…to…Rebecca?
I guess Mrs. Danvers doesn’t set Manderley on fire with herself in it.
“You know, Second Mrs. DeWinter, I want to apologize for being so harsh with you. I’ve been quite unkind these past few weeks, and I’m ashamed”“Oh Mrs. Danvers, it’s I who should apologize! I know how much Rebecca meant to you – I should have been more sensitive!”They hug, and then perform a karaoke version of “You’re My Best Friend” by Queen as the whole cast dances and the credits roll.
random inclusion of songs by the jazzy late ’60s and early ’70s folk-rock band Pentangle…what
What a shame! Kristin Scott Thomas as Mrs. Danvers seemed so enticing, too.
“The subtexts are now literal, which means that there aren’t any subtexts at all.”Blerrrrrrgh. Although what would you expect from adapters who start by making the central couple the same age?
Forgive me if this is a major plot point of the book, but why does closing the age gap matter? I honestly only vaguely remember this book from my English class, in which I consistently referred to it as Rebeccer to annoy my teacher.“Miss B, when is the Rebeccer essay due?” and then her eyes would bug out.Ugh, I think we also had to read Ethan Frome that semester in a back to back “sad wives club” syllabus.
Because Rebecca is about the journey from being attracted to your dad to being attracted to murders.
It’s been a long time since I watched Rebecca, but I will have to rewatch with that statement in mind.
Maxim DeWinter is 42 in the book. That’s barely old enough to have a daughter in her 20s, but just barely.
Ha ha, Ethan Frome! Possibly the most hated of all high school books.Closing the age gap doesn’t change the plot but it changes the vibe — Maxim’s age and experience are part of the seduction and Ms. DeWinter the Second is largely unformed (she doesn’t even have a name!), she gravitates to someone with a history because she has nothing of her own. Which leaves her vulnerable. That lack of balance is part of the book’s overall slipperiness, if you’re not going to ride that particular tone then why adapt it in the first place? Plenty of other “girl hooks up with guy who is not all he appears” stories out there.
Ahhh, got it, thank you. May need to dust ol’ Rebeccer off and try it again. I DO remember Ethan Frome VIVIDLY because I wrote my final paper about how the pickle dish was a dick.
I almost want to give Ethan Frome a second chance, because how awful of a book is this for fucking high schoolers? An alien lifestyle and choices that approximately zero teens have ever had to make, tied to a cold and dry style. No wonder I hated it. But on the other hand, that fact that you could write a term paper on this subject (and while I don’t recall specifics I definitely believe you that this was a thing that could be argued) is not helping the cause.
I do not need to read it again because that book is fully ingrained in my brain, but you’re right, what the hell are high school students supposed to get from that other than “If ya cheat on your mean ol’ wife you’re gonna crash your sled and get stuck with TWO mean old wives.”In this essay (I’m sure the prompt was something like “Explain some of the symbolism in Ethan Frome) I said something along the lines of “The pickle dish symbolized Ethan’s penis. It was Zenobia’s favorite pickle dish but she didn’t ever use it and kept it on a shelf, but then Maddie found it and broke it and his penis was free.” I just wanted an excuse to write about dicks, I was constantly trying to find academic reasons to talk about inappropriate stuff and get away with it, I was so insufferable and thought I was so fucking funny, it’s embarrassing looking back. This was almost 20 years ago, so I could be combining a few different classes, but I think in that class we read Ethan Frome and Rebecca and the plays The Crucible and A Raisin in the Sun!Honestly WTF was with that syllabus. I remember almost nothing of Rebecca but I 1000% remember EF because I told everyone that listened this book was about dicks.
Bwahahahahahaha, “fuck you I’m going to write about dicks” is a perfectly legit response to having classic literature shoved down your throat. Now I’m remembering how several of us fixated on Billy Budd “spilling his soup” on Claggart. That’s not a bad syllabus aside from Frome — The Crucible has teens and oppression, Rebecca is weird and horny and also about young people and Raisin is about family stuff at heart. The two plays are (or were) pretty standard curriculum I think, I know I got them at some point.
What were your high school years (I was 99-03)? I can remember reading the followingA couple Shakespeare plays (and then we had to rewrite one set in a different time period and we did Amish MacBeth)NightAnimal FarmLord of the FliesOf Mice and MenA Separate Peacefucking A Once And Future KingFrankensteinGreat GatsbyScarlet Letter but I feel like we also read Blithedale Romance? Or maybe I read that on my own. Another crazy Zenobia….Crucible, Raisin in the Sun, EF, Rebecca as previously mentionedThe only one I really remember being like “yeah this book slaps” was Lord of the Flies.Looking at this list you can see that English teachers were sent to try and prepare us for “things get real fucked up once you’re an adult”. (Night was very good and intense but I wasn’t like “fuck yeah Night!”)
Graduated in 2000, so am able (and legally required) to tell you to get off my lawn. Lot of overlap here, for Shakespeare we had Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, McBeth and I think King Lear, definitely had Gatsby and Flies and Mice and Farm. Once and Future King rules! We only read Sword and the Stone (in middle school maybe?). Not sure if actually getting to read horror via Frankenstein is worth it if you also have to read A Separate Piece. Probably the best assigned reading we had was Cat’s Cradle, what a great book (and another one that’s excellent for teen readers I think). I believe the most contemporary author we had was Toni Morrison and Beloved is also a book I should give another shot, that is one weird novel.
Hello, fellow old! We also read Cat’s Cradle, are you from Indiana too? I think every public high school in Indiana has at least one Vonnegut on the list
I’ll see your Ethan Frome and raise you The Scarlet Letter. 🙂
I hated The Scarlett Letter too but I think Hawthorne got a pass of “well, he’s from 1840, of course he sucks.” And it had some cool mutilation and fucking (implied) at least! Also, for me Hawthorne gets residual good will from the boss Young Goodman Brown.
Sorry but have to disagree. There is NO WAY The Scarlet Letter is more hated than Ethan Frome. There is literally NOTHING relatable in that story to the life of any high schooler no matter the region, race, or socioeconomic status. At least in The Scarlet Letter kids can be like “yup, i’ve been called and or called someone a slut” I can vaguely recognize this situation. The only thing relatable in EF is that sometimes sledding can be dangerous.
Oh posh. Any pretty young thing (and she is pretty enough to attract the attention of every man in the story) who somehow ends up as a ladies companion has a history. She is also running from something. The fact that we never know what it is (aside from poverty) does not change that.
The age gap matters, just as much as the gap in terms of economic stability, because it underscores the power differential here. Put them at the same age, but just different classes, and the gulf between them seems less questionable. In the book, one might even argue that Maxim is grooming her or taking advantage of her as a result of her age and innocence. He remarks in the book at several points about disliking her when she appears too worldly or experienced. Closing the age gap makes this seem slightly less, well, alarming than it is otherwise. I like Armie Hammer but it was not a great choice.
Well if it’s got Art Deco sets and pretty people wearing handsome clothes I’m there. That’s the main reason I watch Miss Fisher Mysteries and almost any Agatha Christie adaptation.
I watched the first two seasons of Miss Fisher and enjoyed it but was getting tired of the will-they-or-won’t-they between Phryne and Inspector Whatshisname. Good show, but man does it stick to a formula.
I wish people would stop treating the movie as the “real” version of the story while referring to the book like an afterthought. I love the movie, but then I recently read the book and it’s SO much better. Hitchcock’s faithfulness to the book is far more limited than this review makes it sound. Key details are skimmed over, and the entire ending’s dynamic is changed by removing The Female Protagonist from the situation in the third act, sidelining both her and Mrs. DeWinter until they just sort of pop up again at the end. A good “Rebecca” adaptation is one that would keep the focus squarely on them both, with Maxim being almost of a liability or plot device by the end. I have little faith that this Netflix version will do it justice, but I still wish people wouldn’t associate such a powerfully woman-based story on the great but critically flawed adaptation by a man who has a history of disregarding and even abusing women.
This makes me sad. I love the original story, and while I absolutely adored the Hitchcock version… I do not adore Hitchcock now that I know what kind of person he is, so I won’t watch it again. I had hoped this would fill in some sort of gap there. 🙁
I’ve seen all of Wheatley’s films (other than Happy New Year, Colin Burstead) and frankly I’m not sure why. The premises are always interesting (OK, that’s why), but with the exception of Kill List they all gradually run out of steam without providing a satisfactory conclusion. And even Kill List’s conclusion didn’t make a whole lot of sense, IMO.
Admittedly I’ve only seen Kill List (which I love) but before the trailer dropped I was so pumped for this. I thought Wheatley would be a good match for the material and it was going to be so weird and horny :/ what a bummer.
I really should quit harping on this, but is there anyone else in Hollywood who would have been cast more “against type” in this than Armie Hammer? I mean, I know that actors get paid to not be themselves, but what in Hammer’s filmography gave anyone any inkling this could work? Iggy doesn’t say he’s terrible though, just a miserable mannequin, so maybe I should let it go.
This girl had an attention affair for this?
For the record, Maxim DeWinter is 42 in the novel, and the narrator is in her 20s. Granted, Armie Hammer is 34, but 42 in not that old. Maxim DeWinter is not supposed to be an old man.
I’ve finally watched it (twice, I’m that weird about Rebecca) and I’m so late to the party that I might as well not comment, but I’m just so frustrated.
* How did a 2020 adaptation work SO HARD to remove any and all lesbian subtext here? Danver and Rebecca were clearly SOMETHING, at the very least Danvers loved her romantically just as much as anything else. This is turned into something almost obsessive, her moment in which she talks about Rebecca not loving anyone and doing as she pleased feeling more like a YASS QWEEN moment than anything else.* The alterations to the story are so ridiculous, so hamfisted, that I question all taste. I don’t care if a story deviates from the source material, but this is just pathetic. The ending is awful. Laughably bad, and a laughably poor way of representing the finale of the book itself.* I blame writing more than casting, but the protagonist is so woefully mismanaged here that it’s a mess. In the book, you’re never sure how reliable she truly is, and you suspect her inner life is so rich that she has no true bead on reality. Here, you have no real sense of that aside from a few moments whens he weeps upon overhearing what others say.
* My only positive note is that while Armie is way too young to be a convincing Maxim, his performance as Maxim undone DOES start to outshine Olivier – it’s the only time he does. It’s not that I think Armie’s bad or anything, he’s just…it’s not working here. The whole sleepwalking scene that they clearly thought would do something Big was a fucking eyeroll.
* I’m so disappointed. If you have an opportunity to pull in a director who is unusual, GO WITH IT and just try new things. Again, I don’t care if you deviate from source material – but it’s that they did it here to insert ridiculous cliches that did nothing to provoke thought or put a spin on anything. It felt insulting, as if they felt the need to add these things to underscore things for an audience who could easily pick them up on their own.
I don’t particularly care about the Hitchcock movie, though I have seen it.. For me, the problem with this very bad movie is its fundamental misreading of the text. The filmmakers don’t seem to have any idea what the book is about, nor how to translate any of it to film. Nor how to cast the main roles.It was interesting to reread the book recently, when a book group I was in was reading it, several of the members were doing so for the first time. I read it first when I was about 12 or so, and was captivated by it. Reading it as a mature woman, however, I just wanted to slap the nameless heroine a lot of the time. It’s also interesting to read Maxim’s description of why he did what he did (which this poor excuse for an adaptation doesn’t bother with), with Margaret Atwood’s quote in mind: What women fear most from men is being killed; what men fear most from women is being laughed at. And I realized how transgressive the book was, in forcing us, through the narrative, to sympathize with a murderer and hope he gets away with it so that he and the narrator can live happily ever after. I don’t think du Maurier could get away with that now.I asked the group how they felt about sympathizing with a wife murderer, and none of them had thought of it that way! One woman kind of shook herself and said that after learning about what a terrible woman R was, she was in total sympathy with Maxim, but now she wanted to rethink it. I think that was what du Maurier wanted us to do.