Mrs. de Winter

I read the book Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier over the summer; it took me by surprise. I expected it to be a classic version of a trashy romance novel... and at the beginning, it met my expectations. Du Maurier's style is simplistic, almost juvenile-- while the writing is not bad, per se, neither is it well-polished. But the more I read, the more I realized what a competent author du Maurier really was. Her style mirrors the theme of her novel: coming-of-age from naivete to consciousness. And despite the simple premise-- a young second wife trying to fill the unfamiliar shoes of her predecessor-- Rebecca proved to be a tale well worth the study.

Tonight, I watched Alfred Hitchcock's film adaptation of du Maurier's novel. It was the first Hitchcock movie I have ever seen, and I have to agree that he deserves the title of master. Rebecca ranks among one of the best film adaptations I have seen. The characters looked and acted exactly as I had imagined them-- though, of course, that is not the only criteria for an effective adaptation. Hitchcock flawlessly tread the line du Maurier had mapped between light innocence and dark forboding; the balance between lightness and evil, happiness and pain. Joan Fontaine's performance as the second Mrs. de Winter was spot-on: everything, from her facial expressions to her posture to her timid girlishness, was perfectly in tune with the unsure, innocent character laid out in the novel. Her subsequent transformation into a grown-up was equally elegant in its execution, and, I thought, more marked than the character's change in the book. In a way, Rebecca reminds me of the Audrey Hepburn classic Sabrina (later remade with Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond). Sabrina deals with the same kind of transformation from girl to woman, just without the ghost story. But Hepburn and Ormond have nothing on Fontaine-- while these portrayers of Sabrina succeeded in conveying a silly, bookish girl, they did so in a way that showed too much of the confidence that Sabrina would grow into. Fontaine, on the other hand, presents a character who is painfully reminiscent of adolescence-- the young Mrs. de Winter is never quite up to speed, never quite has all the information, never quite feels at ease at the Manderley estate. She is the young teenager finally old enough to attend a party with her parents, dressed in elegant clothing that doesn't feel as if it fits right, expected to use more pieces of silverware than she knows what do with, uncomfortable and outclassed by the ideas discussed among guests, uncertain of the correct etiquette for anything, even something as small as what to do with your napkin or where to leave your handbag.

In sum, go and read the book Rebecca and then watch the film. Both du Maurier and Hitchcock do a beautiful job of telling a tale that is a little too familiar for our taste-- yet at the same time, keeps us glued to the story, enraptured.