Based on a 1938 novel of the same name and Alfred
Hitchcock’s first American production, Rebecca
also won the famed Director his only Best Picture Oscar. A young woman (Joan
Fontaine) meets an aristocratic widower (Laurence Olivier) in Monte Carlo and following a brief romance the
two are wed. The woman returns to England and to her husband’s
Cornish Estate where she discovers that the spectre of her husband’s late wife
still looms large.
It took me a long time to get into Rebecca (that came out wrong). It took me a long time to get into
the film (that’s better) and it wasn’t until the last half hour or so that it
was able to hold my attention. I found that I had little interest in the plot
which unravelled at a fairly measured pace. The final few scenes though were
quite spectacular and helped me to forget the unfortunate boredom which I
encountered during the first ninety minutes.
