“Do you think the dead come back to watch the living?”
Hitchcock is one of the best known directors in the world, a director who understood the language of film like few others (and is studied in cinema classes), has probably had more books on cinema written about his work than any other director, and most people know what he looks like and sounds like... yet he never won an Oscar! He was given one of those consolation prize Oscars before he died... but for all of the visual experiments and story experiments he did to push the envelope of cinema, and for all of the precise, quality direction he did in his 53 films (where every shot was carefully chosen to create emotion in the viewer), he got nada. REBECCA won the Best Picture Oscar... but that went to Selznick, the producer.
I think it’s interesting that a quiet costume drama has a better chance of winning a Best Picture Oscar than a movie that makes you feel something - maybe once a movie becomes something experienced on an emotional level it can no longer be analyzed intellectually - and those Oscar voters set it aside.
When I am writing Script Tips for the website, the most difficult films to use as examples are the ones that engaged me - where I became so caught up in the story and characters that I forgot I was watching a movie and felt as if I was just living that story. These are the films that I must see several times before I have the ability to pull myself out of the film enough to analyze the story and jot down notes... yet even then I find myself sucked into the tale no matter how hard I fight it. But a bad movie? My mind is free to wander and analyze all of the faults - the reasons why it is *not* engaging me. Same with a dispassionate movie, or a story “told from outside” where I am viewing what happens but not emotionally involved in the outcome. Those are the easy ones to write Script Tips about, because I’m sitting on the sidelines - they don’t involve me emotionally, only intellectually. Yes, this means those bad parody films like DATE MOVIE only involve me intellectually - I have no emotional connection to those stories and can easily analyze why the suck. One of the reasons why I love AIRPLANE so much is that it actually pulls me into the story emotionally every time, even though it’s a parody. I find myself wanting Robert Hayes to get over his fear of flying and save the passengers and get back together with Julie Haggerty. So it doesn’t matter what the *genre* of the film is, I get pulled into the story based on the writing and characters and situations and direction.
And emotionally involving films are kind of frightening, because we are no longer in control - we are just along for the ride. A great film kidnaps us, and whisks us away to their world for a couple of hours. We forget we are sitting in a cinema... and maybe we aren’t. Maybe a great film transports us in our minds into the world of that film, and leaves our mortal shells in that sticky-floored theater. We are swept away by the film, whether we like it or not. This loss of control may be uncomfortable to some people, so they attempt to intellectually reject these films. I know many people who hate horror movies because they get scared - the very thing a horror movie is supposed to do! Though I understand not wanting to be frightened, this is intellectually rejecting a film *because it works*. The film is stronger than they are, so it is feared and rejected. A film that makes them feel little or nothing, that does *not* sweep them away, is something they can control and therefor like. That staid costume drama is an *easier* film for them to watch than a genre film that kidnaps them for two hours and then dumps them back in their cinema seat emotionally spent. Part of the intellectual is to reject the emotional. To be *civilized*.
Hitchcock films are also filled with plot twists - they are designed to fool you into believing one thing, then springing in that twist Again, critics don’t like to be *fooled* because it makes them into fools - so they often dislike films with plot twists or decide that it is as cheap plot device... because it worked. They may be intellectuals, but they were tricked! By a genre movie! They must say they saw the twist coming, because if they didn’t they are admitting to being fools. Plot twists make them feel stupid, so the *must* dislike and belittle a film with a plot twist in order to save face. So add plot twists to your emotional story and you have a film that critics will dismiss... because it works.
So Hitchcock never won an Oscar... though his film REBECCA did. Who wants to reward the kidnapper who makes you feel like a fool?
Nutshell: REBECCA is a Gothic Romance - a popular fiction genre where the paperback cover usually shows a woman in a nightgown fleeing a castle with the silhouette of a stern man in the window. This subgenre dates back to the novels of those wacky Bronte Sisters, and at times REBECCA seems like a contemporary version of the first half of WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily... and by some coincidence Laurence Olivier was hot off playing Heathcliff in the film version only a year before playing Maxim in REBECCA. JANE EYRE by that other Bronte Sister has a similar haunted dude the chick falls for named Eddie Rochester (not the Jack Benny one). Gothic Romances always have some dark, troubled romantic dude who has some terrible secret, hooking up with some innocent young woman who is not prepared for a guy with this much baggage. So she’s running away in her nightgown while he’s looking out the window in silhouette. (Weird Bill aside - the only part of that I had to look up was the year Olivier was in WUTHERING HEIGHTS!)
REBECCA is kind of the Cinderella story from Hell.
Our leading lady (who has no name and is called “The Second Mrs. De Winter” sometimes in the film, and “I” in the screenplay) (Joan Fontaine) is the mousey assistant to tasteless rich blowhard Edyth Van Hopper (Florence Bates) and her job seems to consist of being constantly insulted and doing all sorts of menial tasks. She is at least ten times as intelligent and Mrs. Van Hopper even though she is in some sort if servant class. While on vacation in Monte Carlo, the boorish Mrs. Van Hooper keeps trying to force herself into the company of rich, brooding widower Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) who does everything possible to avoid her - even though she never gets the hint. Maxim seems to be the only one who notices our leading lady’s wit, and they begin going out together... only Maxim isn’t exactly the best companion. He’s a quiet, brooding man who seems to be haunted by... something. But our leading lady seems to cheer him up, and when the vacation is over, Maxim asks her to marry him. By this point I think she’d marry Jabba The Hutt to get away from Mrs. Van Hooper, so she says yes, they are married in a civil ceremony, and go on a fabulous honeymoon in Europe. Maxim may be quiet and preoccupied by... something... but he’s still a great catch. He’s rich and lives in a massive estate named Manderley and is handsome and kind.
When they return from the honeymoon, things begin to go wrong for our leading lady. She is basically a servant who must now be a princess - and that includes managing the huge mansion and huge staff... headed by the seemingly evil Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson - stealing the show). Mrs. Danvers was the personal maid to Maxim’s first wife, Rebecca, and remains loyal to the dead woman. Our leading lady just isn’t in the same league as Rebecca was, and Mrs. Danvers manages to sneak this into every single conversation the two have. If the giant mansion and all of the servants weren’t intimidating enough, Mrs. Danvers seems to be trying to be making her life hell. Add to all of this - Maxim seems even more preoccupied at home than when he was on vacation. He takes “distant” to new lengths. Our leading lady pokes around the big house, but one room is locked - Rebecca’s bedroom (about twice the size of my entire apartment) - which has been kept exactly as it was the day she died. Creepy!
Our leading lady becomes obsessed by Rebecca in two ways - there is a mystery surrounding her death and no one talks about it, and she tries to dress and act like Rebecca in order to win the attention of the distant Maxim. Rebecca’s life and death include all kinds of strange things - she drowned while sailing, but was an expert swimmer. He also seemed to have a “cousin” (ultra-suave George Sanders) who may have actually been her lover. And there’s a boathouse that no one is allowed to go near - which may be where the lovers met. And many mysteries within the house that concern Rebecca, which Mrs. Danvers is trying to make sure our leading lady does not solve. The other element - our leading lady trying to become Rebecca - is something that pops up in other Hitchcock movies like VERTIGO. Here we have our intelligent but unsophisticated leading lady trying to do a full makeover into the ideal society woman... but when she asks Mrs. Danvers what Rebecca was like in order to duplicate it, she’s usually sabotaged.
Eventually she goes to Maxim and asks about Rebecca’s death, and he tells her what happened - he killed her! Not the answer she wanted to hear. (Actually, he doesn’t say he killed her, he says “I put her there” when asked how she ended up in that sailboat at the bottom of the sea... but in Brian DePalma’s excellent Hitchcock homage OBSESSION - written by the great Paul Schrader - the Maxim-like widower tells his fiancé who is trying ever-so-hard to be like his dead first wife that he killed her. It’s a much better line, kind of the Paul Schrader rewrite of REBECCA 35 years later.)
Well, our leading lady pokes around some more and discovers that Maxim didn’t kill Rebecca, he found her dead and planted her body in the sailboat to avoid a scandal. He didn’t love Rebecca - she was a manipulative slut who only married him for his money and when she died it was the best thing that ever happened to him... except he’s worried that someone will open up the whole can of worms and discover he covered up her death... and now our leading lady has done that very thing!
Experiment: This is Hitchcock’s first film in the United States after a successful career in England, so he’s kind of playing it safe. The cast is mostly British and the story is from a novel by Du Maurier who wrote the novel Hitch’s previous film was based on JAMAICA INN and the story THE BIRDS was based on. But the film is almost the opposite of Hitchcock style suspense - instead of big suspense set pieces the film works mostly on mood. This is interesting because it almost works by the *absence* of action, by the stillness of locations and story and Mrs. Danver’s face. For a director whose style is action oriented, moving camera and editing oriented, the lack of movement ends up being an experiment.
Hitch Appearance: Walking past a phone booth.
Sound Track: Another great Franz Waxman score.
Great Scenes: Though the film does have some great scenes, like when Mrs. Danvers sabotages our leading lady at the costume ball, what makes the film work is the mood, the way it turns the Cinderella story on its head, the secrets and reveals, and the way it always seems to put three characters together with shifting alliances. So let’s look at those aspects of the story.
Mood: The film establishes the mood right out of the gate - which is exactly what you want. The opening image not only sets the tone for the entire story, it also sets up the story itself. We open at night on a winding driveway leading to the huge country estate named Manderley - the mansion shrouded in fog and darkness. Our unnamed leading lady says in voice over, “Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter for the way was barred to me. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done. But as I advanced, I was aware that a change had come upon it. Nature had come into her own again, and little by little had encroached upon the drive with long tenacious fingers, on and on while the poor thread that had once been our drive. And finally, there was Manderley - Manderley - secretive and silent. Time could not mar the perfect symmetry of those walls. Moonlight can play odd tricks upon the fancy, and suddenly it seemed to me that light came from the windows. And then a cloud came upon the moon and hovered an instant like a dark hand before a face. The illusion went with it. I looked upon a desolate shell, with no whisper of the past about its staring walls. We can never go back to Manderley again. That much is certain. But sometimes, in my dreams, I do go back...” The mansion is from her past - a memory in the darkness. It begins as a dream, but as we get closer to the mansion, the fog breaks and we see that it is the skeleton of a mansion - burned out by fire. Some tragedy has taken place here. The beautiful mansion destroyed. The fog concealing, and then revealing the shocking wreckage - and that is how the story works as well. Dark things are revealed. Things have been destroyed in the past...
Beginning with a strong image is a great way to open any kind of screenplay, and here the image of the once beautiful mansion in ruins prepares us for the rest of the story.
Situation and location are important elements in setting the mood, as is time period. Imagine a children’s playground in summer... now imagine that same playground in the dead of winter. These are some of the tools we use when setting mood, along with word choice. The opening of any screenplay can be used to establish mood and location through word choice and description that is poetic... before getting down to the nuts and bolts of action oriented description. But even after a strong image opening, the choice of words used in your action/description is critical to maintaining that mood. I bought a hard copy of the REBECCA script, hoping to post a few evocative descriptions as an example, but this was an adaptation, and the only available version was the shooting script - which was pretty dry and mechanical. I would suggest a script like this is where you get to use the *writing* skills in screenwriting and find the most evocative words you can to paint the picture, without becoming verbose. The key is not to use *many* words, but to use *the right* words - the one that add tone and mood and feeling to the actions.
But every situation, every scene, should be used to create mood. Because this is a romance, there is a “meet cute” - that clever scene where the romantic couple meet. In a rom-com it would be a funny scene, but in REBECCA our female lead comes upon Maxim at the edge of a cliff where he is about to jump to his death. They have an awkward conversation and he moves away from the cliff so that she’ll go away.
After they get married by a justice of the peace - a brief scene of happiness - they drive through the rain to the hulking mansion Manderlay.
Manderley is not a location that is surrounded by life and people - it is secluded at the end of a long, winding, drive - completely isolated from everyone. Though it is surrounded by nature - it seems to be autumn, and the trees are barren. This gives us not only isolation, but *desolation* as an element of location. These things create mood in the background of every scene. The mansion itself is big and empty - creating isolation and desolation even when the scenes are indoors. The mansion is mostly empty rooms shrouded in darkness. To add to the mood, our leading lady is often exploring the closed west wing... where Rebecca used to live. The rooms are not lighted, and she dare not bring a candle or flashlight. Other great locations that create mood are an abandoned beach house filled with cobwebs and dusty boating equipment. Locations, time of day, characters, and story are all selected to create that mood of death and danger and darkness. Consider location as an element of mood.
Negative Cinderella: Once Maxim and our leading lady get to the fairy tale castle of Manderley, the fairy tale romance is over. Because she can never measure up to Rebecca, and everything is a minefield waiting for her to make the wrong step.
There are four minefields in Manderley, beginning with Cinderella having no idea how to be a Princess. She is supposed to be in charge ogf the house, and that includes the huge staff of servants... but she is a servant herself and has no idea how to order people to do things. Not because she isn’t intelligent enough, but because she isn’t aggressive enough - she is still that mousey little "paid companion". Questions about the dinner menu (which is *printed out* every day) need to be answered right away. The gardening staff is here, what do you want them to do? She has no personal maid of her own, which means someone will have to be pulled from some other job to take care of her. She is in charge of correspondence, and there is a huge desk with drawers full of envelopes and stationery and an address book - all monogrammed with Rebecca’s initials. She doesn’t know who any of these people are - and when she scans down the address book everyone is some form of royalty or society... except her. She has no idea that there is a “morning room” where you have tea in the morning, and some other room for later in the day. All kinds of rooms and rules and customs she is unaware of... and she is so far out of her league that everything she does is a potential mistake (and usually an actual mistake). Suspense is built around her not knowing “the rules”, being completely out of her depth and making mistake after mistake. How will she keep from looking like a fool? When she knocks over a China Cupid on her desk and it shatters, she hides the pieces in a drawer rather than call for a maid to clean up the mess. Being a Princess means that if she uses the wrong fork at dinner, people will think she’s an not worthy of being Max’s wife.
Another minefield is that monogrammed stationery... and Rebecca`s ghost. Though there is no translucent figure or someone in a sheet, Rebecca’s ghost is still present in every scene. “Mrs. DeWinter always...” She lives in the shadow of the former mistress of the house, and *everything* has her monogram on it - her territory is marked. Scene after scene has our leading lady bumping up against the memory of Rebecca - the perfect woman. It’s bad enough that Mrs. Danvers and the other servants seem to be constantly comparing her to Rebecca, but even Maxim changes at Manderlay - he’s more moody, always brooding, and distant. Rebecca is present in every scene, every decision that our leading lady makes, and every time Maxim looks at her. In a scene where she cries, Maxim hands her a handkerchief... with Rebecca’s monogram! Maxim seems to still be in love with his dead wife, using our leading lady as nothing more than a romantic band-aid to cover his pain. REBECCA is a ghost story without a physical ghost - just the strong memory of Rebecca, and almost everything in Manderlay is a reminder of Rebecca and a part of Rebecca and designed by Rebecca or created by Rebecca. There is no escape from Rebecca - she haunts our leading lady no matter where she tries to hide in Manderlay.
To give the ghost of Rebecca a human form, we have Mrs. Danvers - who began service at Manderlay as Rebecca’s personal maid. She is constantly peering over our leading lady’s shoulder, waiting for her to make a mistake... waiting to point out how much more sophisticated Rebecca was. She asks our leading lady if Maxim approves of her terrible hair style... which makes her doubt Max’s affections when she probably needs them most. It is impossible for our leading lady to win Mrs. Danver’s approval, yet that seems to be what is required to exist in Manderlay. Mrs. Danvers has kept Rebecca’s room exactly as it was - like a shrine to the dead woman. Her brush in *exactly* the same place - not a centimeter to the right or left. When our leading lady sneaks into Rebecca’s room, Mrs. Danvers *materializes* in the room to discover her, and then gives her a full tour - every single moment designed to compare our leading lady to the always superior Rebecca. Rebecca’s lingerie was hand made by nuns - how can you compete with that? Also - you can see right through Rebecca’s night gown - her body so perfect that she wanted it to be seen.
Mrs. Danvers is a great character - and maybe the model for Hannibal Lecter - she is almost never shown moving - she just appears in a room... or disappears. Her face is always so still it looks dead - the only expression she has is disdain. Her voice is quiet and expressionless - almost robotic. She provides a few shock moments when she suddenly appears somewhere to criticize our leading lady, then vanishes in the time it takes you to look away. The use of stillness, long pauses, and a slower pace builds suspense by creating *denser* conflict - and Mrs. Danvers character is that stillness incarnate. By the end of the tour it is obvious that our leading lady will never measure up to Rebecca - it is impossible. And she can never win Mrs. Danvers’ approval - everything she does will always be wrong. Minor issues of etiquette result in major disdain and disappointment from Mrs. Danvers.
The biggest minefield is Maxim - he has some dark past, some secret, and our leading lady has no idea what it is. Everyone seems to know the backstory of Rebecca’s life and death except her. A dinner conversation mention of *swimming* brings up Max’s memories of Rebecca *drowning*. Everything for conversations about sailing to the boat house to what she wears to a costume party might be the thing that sets Maxim off - flooding him with painful memories of Rebecca’s death. These things make Maxim angry and sullen and he pulls farther and farther away from our leading lady. Isolating her in the huge house with Rebecca’s ghost. By having her *not* know the Rebecca backstory, almost anything she says or does might trigger Max. A scene where he is joyously showing her home movies from their honeymoon *instantly* goes south when she says the wrong thing. Completely innocent, nothing you would ever think would trigger the tirade from Maxim that follows. Suspense is built around our leading lady saying the wrong thing at the wrong time or wearing the wrong clothes... and Maxim exploding. And scenes are created where she must tip-toe through the minefield, knowing that one false step...
Three’s A Crowd: I believe that good drama requires three characters. Two characters is an argument where either may be right, and it just goes back and forth. Add a third character and you have someone who can be convinced that one or the other is right - or maybe that both are wrong and they are right. You have a character who can go back and forth between the two possibilities. When you have a third wheel, that person can end up “stakes” (whether they side with a character or not) or “conflict” (if they come between two characters). The great thing about three characters is the character who is an obstacle to one character can be the stakes to another... and all the way around the circle! Three is one of those magic numbers... and in REBECCA almost every scene and plot element are about groups of three characters.
We start out with our leading lady, her bitchy boss Mrs. Van Hopper and Maxim - one of those three gets in the way of the other two.
At Manderlay we get our leading lady, Maxim, and Mrs. Danvers - one of those three gets in the way of the other two.
We also have our leading lady, Rebecca’s ghost, and Maxim - one of those three gets in the way of the other two.
We find out that Rebecca had an affair: Maxim, Rebecca, her “cousin” Jack Favell (George Sanders) - with Favell getting in the way of Maxim’s marriage to Rebecca.
Again and again in the film we are given a situation with three characters, one who gets in the way of the other two - one who is the antagonist in this scene or situation. Look at your scenes - if you have two characters who are together, who or what keeps them apart? Though this may be more important in a romance or rom-com, in any situation where two characters are in agreement (lack of conflict) who is the character that forces them apart and creates conflict? If you have two people who agree on a solution to a problem, who disagrees to create conflict and drama? And which of the two characters in agreement begins to be swayed to the other side? (which is kind of a betrayal.) Look for the magic number three - it can be the key to drama and conflict!
Secrets & Reveals: The most important thing in a gothic romance is that character with a dark past that hangs over them like a cloud and must be brought into the light in order to be resolved. The minefield that is Maxim DeWinter is all about that dark secret surrounding Rebecca’s death, and even though every time our leading lady stumbles into some aspect of that dark secret it creates conflict with Maxim, the man she loves, the only way to resolve the conflict is to get Maxim to reveal that secret. There is a built in dilemma there, and that’s what makes the story work. The thing that will cause our leading lady the most pain is the thing that is required in order for her to find eventual happiness. Rebecca’s ghost must be laid to rest - and the only way to do that is for Maxim to reveal what really happened that night.
The key to a great reveal is that the *audience* wants to know the information. Needs to know the information. Are *hungry* for the information. Reveals that don’t work are just information dumps with shocking information - but as soon as that shock is over, we don’t really care. The information may not alter the story in any discernable way or may not satisfy any need in the audience. This was one of the problems with UNDER CAPRICORN - the reveals were a soap opera shock, but nothing much else. To make the reveal a *real* moment, you need to tease us - to make the audience ask “What is the secret behind Rebecca’s death?” The more you tease the audience and make us wonder what the big secret is, the more they want to know the secret, and the more impact that secret will have when it is revealed (provided it is not what we expected).
Most movies have a big question at their core, and the screenwriter’s job is to know what that question is and keep the viewer asking it. In a romantic comedy the question may be - will the couple get past all of the obstacles and hook up at the end? In RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and other quest movies the question is - will Indiana Jones get the ark and keep it away from the Nazis? In a romantic thriller movie like SEA OF LOVE the question is - is the woman the cop loves a serial killer? There is usually some question at the heart of every story, and in REBECCA that question is - how did she die and did Maxim kill her? The movie keeps teasing us with this question again and again - it is what drives the story. For our Cinderella to live happily ever after, Maxim must no longer be obsessing about Rebecca... and she must know the location of all of those hidden mines so that she doesn’t step on one... and maybe even have Maxim *defuse* those mines. To do that, we need to know what happened that night, the night Rebecca was killed. So the whole story *needs* to be building to the moment of the reveal, we need to know that there is a big secret, and wonder exactly what that secret is. Did Maxim kill her? Is Cinderella married to a murderer? By keeping this question alive throughout the film, so that the audience *needs* to know the answer, when it is revealed it has impact. It is a *resolution* not just a shock. A good reveal *answers* questions, instead of creating more questions.
That means whatever is reveals *can not* be what we expect... making a reveal like a plot twist. It needs to be something that is logical and motivated and *present* in the story so far (not something you pull out of your ass at the end), but at the same time not what that audience thought it was going to be. So we need to create a “red herring” reveal that we hint at, that the audience believes will be the big reveal... so that they can be surprised by the actual reveal. In REBECCA we are lead to believe that Maxim was madly in love with Rebecca, and when he discovered that she was cheating on him with Favell, he murdered her. But that is *not* what happened at all! When the truth is revealed, it makes perfect sense - but Maxim is not the killer at all. So the reveal can be a surprise even after 2 hours of teasing the audience with the secret.
What that secret is I have already revealed in one of the opening paragraphs... but maybe you have forgotten it by now? If so, you may still be surprised at that moment of the film when you watch it. REBECCA is a great lush romance that still works well 60 years later.
- Bill
The other Fridays With Hitchcock.
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