Rebecca (1940)

Directed by

Alfred Hitchcock

Genre

drama film, romance film, mystery film, melodrama, thriller film, psychological drama film

Country

United States

Runtime

2h 06m

Rated

NR

Rating

7.9 of 10 from 1,997 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A young woman marries a wealthy widower and moves into his grand estate. She finds herself haunted by the memory of his first wife, Rebecca, who died before she arrived. The housekeeper's hostility and the lingering shadow of Rebecca make her new life increasingly uneasy.

gothictensemelancholicmysteriousbroodingslow-burnunsettlingromanticsuspenseful

What happens

Rebecca is a 1940 American romantic psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It was Hitchcock's first American project, and his first film under contract with producer David O. Selznick. The screenplay by Robert E. Sherwood and Joan Harrison, and adaptation by Philip MacDonald and Michael Hogan, were based on the 1938 novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier. The film stars Laurence Olivier as the brooding, aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter and Joan Fontaine as the young, never-named woman who becomes his second wife, with Judith Anderson, George Sanders and Gladys Cooper in supporting roles. The film is a gothic tale shot in black-and-white. Maxim de Winter's first wife Rebecca, who died before the events of the film, is never seen. Her reputation and recollections of her, however, are a constant presence in the lives of Maxim, his new wife and the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers. Rebecca was theatrically released on April 12, 1940, to critical and commercial success. It received eleven nominations at the 13th Academy Awards, more than any other film that year. It won two awards: Best Picture and Best Cinematography, becoming the only film directed by Hitchcock to win the former award. In 2018, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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• The Unseen (1945)