Non-P: du Maurier?

[David Kilroy]

Didn't know about Rita-- I never kept track of Welles' marriages outside of
Oja --so thanks for mentioning her.  You made me go over her bio.  Didn't
realize she starred in an adaptation of Salomé.  Have to track that down.
Writing a dancer means eventually I'll have to *draw her dancing*, which
means tons of study & practice.

"You've no artistic integrity, that's your trouble; this is how you cheapen
yourself."  --Noel Coward to Sir Lawrence

That was before he took the contract that made his film career.  He faded
in and out several times; Rebecca was one of his comeback phases.  Olivier
aside, having rewatched it again I'm quite taken with Joan Fontaine; George
Sanders is delightfully sleazy, and Judith Anderson is mellifluously
malevolent as Mrs. Danvers.  Hitch lavished all his best efforts on
Anderson and it shows.

The big flaw with the film, I feel like, isn't that it's faithless as an
adaptation-- it concentrates du Maurier's story beats rather masterfully,
and is attentive to all the best details --the issue is where Hollywood
moralizing puts a hammy hand in.  The romantic lead of the story wasn't
permitted to be a jealous villain so Rebecca's murder was rewritten as an
"Oh whoopsie" kind of accident.  Conversely the lesbian subtext of Mrs.
Danvers' & Rebecca's relationship in the novel is made cartoonishly
explicit onscreen, with Danvers fondling the cups of Rebecca's ephemeral
nightie.  Gawd.  Mrs. Danvers can't just start the fire at Manderlay and
slip away into the night, she has to burn herself alive!  That's why ending
with that shot of the burning bed left me in stitches.  It's so judgmental,
while the novel didn't really come down on any particular side.  This
moralizing has a curiously ameliorating effect on the titular specter:
Rebecca is only there in inference so all the lip-smacking nastiness of the
book is reduced to that one amazing scene of Danvers trying to hypnotize
our heroine into suicide.  Rebecca's androgyny was strongly emphasized by
du Maurier and the affair with Favell implied to be hideously incestuous,
yet none of that comes through in the movie, consequently Rebecca is barely
there.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Olivier#cite_note-FOOTNOTEOlivier199492-66>
Not to say the book is high art.  Du Maurier knew who she was writing for,
what readers wanted.  Salacious scandal!  She doesn't make the anonymous
heroine particularly pro-active in any respect; her class-consciousness
elides over the course the story, so when she discovers Maxim's a murderer
she makes her one true stand, the one thing I didn't expect, taking the
murderer's side!  The film verson of her is maybe less vanilla, but all in
all du Maurier's not trying to make a big point by crafting a gutsy
heroine.  "She" is there to witness, strictly a vessel for audience
identification.  Allowing her to be corrupted by the pomp of Manderlay is
maybe the closest du Maurier gets to saying anything...  If she was even
trying to, which I doubt.  She was out to make a bestseller.  Boy, she
succeeded!

For all my kvetching I'm not against Hitchcock's rendition.  The lighting
is marvelous!  Rebecca was a big win for him, plus he deserves slack for
surviving a production with that speed freak Selznick.  And, as I said, the
movie meant we wound up with Citizen Kane.


On Sun, Nov 22, 2015 at 12:01 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at gmail.com> wrote:

> Interesting fact:  Rita Hayworth is the mom of Rebecca Welles.
>
> Never read the book but have seen movie more than once. Welles went
> blind, what happened to Olivier? In the  movies, I mean.
>
> On Sat, Nov 21, 2015 at 8:46 PM, David Kilroy <thesaintgodard at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Srsly, ending with that burning bed... haven't laughed like this in
> > weeks. At least Hitch managed to inspire Orson Welles.
> >
> > --
> > http://davidkilroy.tumblr.com/
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>



-- 
http://davidkilroy.tumblr.com/
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