Customer Rating: Summary: I'm not the sort of woman men marry Comment: The one that got the Best Picture Oscar...even if it was David O Selznick who picked it up as producer. It remains one of his most popular features, especially with women by all accounts, although Germaine Greer isn't a fan.
This was Hitch's first Hollywood film and is a brooding atmospheric film that takes a great novel (which was normally something Hitchcock would avoid like the plague, arguing that if a novel was too good, how could he possibly improve on it) and makes it into a film that is just as good, if not better.
Joan Fontaine makes a compelling "Second Mrs De.Winter" and whilst Laurence Oliver can't quite drop his "luvvy" acting style to make the role as Maxim De Winter equally as compelling, it's fair to say that he does make a good stab at the role. Judith Anderson makes a great Mrs Danvers, effortlessly adding the neccessary creepiness and spite to the chararacter, whilst George Sanders role as Jack Favell may not take up too much screen time, but is very memorable.
Sticking mainly to the plot of the novel, the changes Hitchock made to the book's plot aren't neccesarilly for the best. The film laws of the time meant that murder had to have consequences, so as a result, Rebecca's death is treated as an accident in the film. Secondly, Hitchcock takes away the ambiguity of the book's ending with his own fiery resolution.
I tend to think that the film takes a little too much time meandering whilst you wait for the "important" bits to come along, but by any stretch of the imagination, it's still a very fine piece of cinema. And it's hard to think of any other version of this classic story has ever come close to matching it.
![Rebecca [1940]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51lqceemrHL._SL160_.jpg)
