What makes us most distinctively human, our reason or our emotions? How do we know when relationships with others are authentic, and when they’re just a matter of utility? Does civilization corrupt or improve us? Is honesty all it’s cracked up to be, or is lying a social inevitability? Which is more important to our happiness, love or work?
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Alfred Hitchcock’s first American film—part love story, part ghost story, part courtroom melodrama—centers on a poor, timid young woman who falls in love with wealthy aristocrat Maxim de Winter, a widower tortured over the death of his first wife. When the young woman becomes the second Mrs. De Winter and moves into Maxim’s estate, she finds her predecessor’s initials stamped all over the house, and its staff in thrall to her beautiful, vibrant memory. But at the heart of the first Mrs. De Winter’s legacy lies a rot, and just what that rot represents in the film—be it the oppressions of vitality and ambition, the wages of class mobility, the unruly desires of sexuality, or the latent evidence of civilizational decline—is our subject today. Wes & Erin discuss the 1940 Best Picture winner “Rebecca,” starring Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier.
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Since Hitchcock specialized in one kind of film–suspense–it is easier, and endlessly intriguing–to see how he uses the same material to weave and reweave that theme. Like Penelope! The saying is that every artist makes only variations of one work and Hitchcock certainly adds credibility to that saying.
In this case, you can see Psycho as a remake of Rebecca. Both Rebecca and Mrs. Bates are central to the films but are already dead when the films open and they never appear in their respective films. Also, although neither character appears, other characters bring them to life by saying things they said or mimicking their voices. Of course, Norman mimics Mrs. Bates frequently, but also, in Rebecca, both Maxim and the doctor repeat things Rebecca said and mimic her when doing so. Norman wears Mrs. Bates’ clothes, and the wife in Rebecca wears a copy of the dress Rebecca wore.
Also note these features:
1. Maxim tells his wife that he hit Rebecca, she fell and hit her head, and died. Then he picked up her body, took it to her sailboat with the attached little rowboat, took the sailboat out and then let water into the boat and knocked holes in the planking. He got into the rowboat, rowed away, then stopped and watched as the sailboat sank.
Now look at what Norman does with Marion in Psycho. He kills her, she falls, then he picks her up and puts her in the trunk of the car. He drives to the edge of the swamp, pushes the car in, and then stands at the edge and watches the car sink.
Same scene, different film.
2. When the wife finally goes into Rebecca’s inner sanctum, her bedroom, she goes to the dressing table and looks at the items on it. Mrs. Danvers comes in and shows her Rebecca’s clothes in the wardrobe. The clothes are kept exactly as they were when Rebecca died.
In Psycho, when Lila gets into the house, she goes into Mrs. Bates’ bedroom. She looks at the items on the dressing table. She goes to the wardrobe and opens the door. Mrs. Bates’ clothes are still there, exactly as she left them.
Same scene, different film.