Rebecca (1940)

Rebecca is considered a classic film and after having seen it, I can see why, even though some aspects of the film feel a bit dated. A widowed man meets a young girl during his vacation in France. He charms her and they fall in love with each other. The man is extremely rich but the girl isn't. He takes her to his home, an enormous manor house. The place is haunted by the late Mrs. The new wife, who wants to please her husband and restore everything to what it once was, finds herself more and more alienated: who was this Rebecca and how did she die? I cannot call myself a Hitchcock connoisseur, in fact, I haven't seen all that many Hitchcock films. This one was a positive surprise: an elegant film about repressed memories and obsession. Hitchcock made a horror movie without any supernatural elements; it is just the kind of movie when we really get a sense for places as occupied by those who are no longer alive, without the slightest reference to any kinds of undead creatures. All Hitchcock has to do is take us on a tour in a house, every little squeak and patch of light immersed in repression and strangeness. Rebecca is an extremely entertaining movie, perhaps because all of the visual details seem to bear so much significance, every small frame a heap of meaning, explicit and hidden. So much is going on at the same time, but the story is focused and developed in a disciplined way. While the story may seem perfectly harmless, the entire film is boiling with a strange kind of menacing energy. - - The character that fascinated me the most was the obsessive, stern-faced housekeeper, clearly enthralled by the late Mrs - and obviously in the business of destroying the happiness of the new Mrs. During this time, the rules about what could and couldn't be shown in Hollywood films were strict. Was this a conscious way of trying to break these codes and hint at a forbidden type of desire? Unsurprisingly, this film present THE typical image of lesbians: obsessive, perverted - and they HAVE TO DIE!