The Telegraph (16/Oct/2009) - Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca: rows, rivalries and a movie classic

(c) Tim Robey in The Telegraph (16/Oct/2009)

Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca: rows, rivalries and a movie classic

"Rebecca" was Alfred Hitchcock’s first Hollywood film and though he disowned it later, it has stood the test of time.

When the Academy Awards for 1940 were announced, at LA’s Biltmore Hotel on February 27 1941, it was a bittersweet night for Alfred Hitchcock. His first Hollywood production, Rebecca, took Best Picture, but he lost Best Director to John Ford for The Grapes of Wrath, the first in a career-long run of five nominations without taking a trophy.

But Rebecca’s producer David O Selznick made history that night: it was the second year running that he had taken the big prize, following his triumph in 1940 with Gone with the Wind. From the start, Rebecca had been a battle of attrition between producer and director and the Oscars added insult to injury by calling victory for the boss. It was he who had optioned Daphne du Maurier’s book originally, lured Hitchcock over to Hollywood, and exercised right of veto over script and casting.

The perceptible tug-of-war between their two different visions of what the film should be is one of the most fascinating things about the movie. It is one of the few examples we have of its director working to order and yet it also has many of the ingredients of quintessential Hitchcock, from the first superb, misty shots through the gates of Manderley, luring us forward to the picturesquely sinister mansion where a marriage will begin to crumble and a murder mystery resolve itself in flames.

Hitchcock had read early galley proofs of du Maurier’s novel – she was the daughter of an old acquaintance – and recognised it as a project that would fit his style, but the option was too expensive. So it became the bait with which Selznick caught his big fish, the star director he had been hoping to welcome into the studio fold for several years.

Their conflicts began with the script. Hitchcock had been working on it in London, first with Michael Hogan then with Joan Harrison, the young secretary he had hired in 1935 and who was to become an important aide and co-scenarist. The draft they submitted to Selznick in June 1939 left the producer “shocked and disappointed beyond words”, as he explained in a legendarily long memo detailing his scene-by-scene grievances.

Hitchcock had departed from du Maurier’s novel in all sorts of ways, beginning with a scene in which Maxim de Winter is sailing on the Riviera and causes his fellow passengers to feel sick by smoking a cigar. This and other comic touches, of the kind Hitchcock had used to leaven the suspense beautifully in his British films, struck Selznick as vulgar and tasteless. He wanted a scrupulously faithful adaptation that would satisfy readers of the book and keep its Gothic gloom intact.

This posed a major obstacle. The novel ends with de Winter unpunished for murdering his thoroughly wicked first wife, a resolution that Hollywood’s Production Code insisted had to be changed. Selznick hired screenwriter and playwright Robert E Sherwood (The Petrified Forest) to solve the problem. As the most famous writer involved, Sherwood received the biggest credit, although his work was basically confined to the final few dialogue scenes, in which the plot is tortuously bent into acceptable shape.

Casting was an even lengthier process. Having looked at the likes of Ronald Colman, William Powell and David Niven for the role of Maxim, they settled on Laurence Olivier, hot from his success in Wuthering Heights. The hope, at least for Olivier, was that Vivien Leigh whom he had just married would join him, but Selznick demurred, intending to whip up all the same global hoopla over the casting of his leading lady that attended pre-production on Gone with the Wind. Moreover, Leigh was arguably too famous by this point to play a bedazzled ingénue convincingly and her screen test was, according to Selznick, terrible. Dozens of actresses were auditioned and Joan Fontaine only gradually emerged as the preferred choice. Harrison complained that she was too coy and simpering, but Hitchcock convinced himself that he could train her to be serviceable in the part, and production began.

Even on set, Hitchcock and Selznick’s working methods clashed. Hitchcock had built his reputation through economy with his takes and “cutting in camera”, which is to say, only filming the angles he wished to use in the edit. Selznick liked plenty of coverage to give him more options to play with – he had a fondness for master shots so that he could show off all the money he’d spent on rugs and draperies. Luckily, their approaches gelled in all the film’s best sequences, which are set in and around Manderley.

Late in his career, Hitchcock all but disowned the film in an interview with François Truffaut. “The fact is, the story lacks humour,” he said. It’s true that the Olivier-Fontaine relationship has no chemistry. But the supporting cast supply great wit and shading and Judith Anderson, in the plum role of Mrs Danvers, is quite unforgettable: the credit for this character – significantly modified from du Maurier to make her younger and more clearly a coded lesbian – is all hers and Hitchcock’s. Rebecca isn’t a masterpiece but it’s very comfortably a classic. Given the wrangles behind it, that’s no small achievement.