Olivier! Fontaine! Big Momma! Hitchcock! Du Maurier! Shere Khan! REBECCA!

This doesn't have a thread, but it should because it's FANTASTIC

can't touch Notorious

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i think they're clearly aiming for different things. Rebecca hits, right from the start. Every turn is perfect, every line and twitch and glance delivers.

Nah, they're both aiming to be awesome movies and succeed.

Hitchcock's wife argued against casting Fontaine and her stony inexpressive mug. (Somehow Max Ophuls fixed it by the time of Letter from an Unknown Woman.)

i'm willing to allow notorious be its own type of awesome that didn't click for me so i started a thread for the magnificent REBECCA instead

I think it's Olivier who gives the less modulated performance; he doesn't know whether to seethe or to suppress his emotions, Kael called it "one of his rare poor" performances but it's far from bad.

he's almost as confusing to watch as Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca.

Olivier is not a very good film actor til he hits his 40s.

so good the authorities made him dick about with colour and process shots for the next 30 years

i agree that olivier's performance wavers between sulk, seethe and simmer when he isn't simpering, i think it works though- he's the unpredictable guessing game in our and fontaine's eyes until the reveal

tbf Maxim de Winter is supposed to be a fucking tool

When I first saw it about twenty years ago I cringed at the scene where Fontaine stashes the broken ceramic in the desk; it reminded me of a couple similar moments in childhood.

agreed! Wooster via hitch

tbf Maxim de Winter is supposed to have killed his wife, like in the book.

I do like it, but no it's not creme de la creme.

I've read very few great books whose also-great film adaptations have stuck so close to the source material.

I posted about this in the other thread; it's better than I remembered. Richard Schickel has a hilarious commentary moment near the end, clucking about Olivier's tics: "I do wish he'd leave his brow alone."

Also Fontaine, like Kim Novak, is really cannily cast; her awkwardness fits.

Not my favorite either but I need to see it again.

Watched for the first time tonight. Good fun. Fontaine crushworhy as all get out in this, too.

this is a really great movie. in my top 3 hitch for sure.

So...there's that new version.

And WHAT THE FLYING FUCK.

If you are at all interested in the new Rebecca I feel compelled to tell you that this is the way they wrote the final speech, no I am not kidding. pic.twitter.com/zuU52e55qg

— Constance Grady (@constancegrady) October 20, 2020

As my podcast cohost put it:

god, this is like if at the end of Gatsby he gets out of the pool with a rakish grin and he was wearing a bulletproof vest the whole time

— Jareditary Pechacek (@vandroidhelsing) October 20, 2020

lol oh no.

Angelica Bastien’s review was pretty brutal: https://www.vulture.com/2020/10/rebecca-netflix-movie-review-a-hollow-turgid-retread.html

Last (x) Movies you are going to Avoid

I can't.

Watched REBECCA (1940) last night, and George Sanders kept reminding me of Matthew Macfadyen pic.twitter.com/1If0lJ8vo0

— John M. Cunningham (@jmcunning) October 1, 2020

i watched the old movie this week and thought the same thing as jaymc

i also read the book for the first time last week and it's much better than the hitchcock movie

It's been a while, but as I recall Hitchcock's film is very faithful to the book.

it is, except for the very end and the details of what happened to rebecca, but because so much stuff happens in the book, the action is overly compressed in the movie and a lot of important plot points get reduced to a quick line or two. bc of this it loses some of the atmosphere and creepiness of the book. joan fontaine is good though.

The sound design and use of horror tropes worked, and Judith Anderson ruled, and I'm never bored watching it. The movie sorta collapses during the inquest and the pub scenes. Second-tier Hitch.