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Ben Wheatley’s demystified Rebecca is a pale imitation of the Hitchcock classic - The A.V. Club

Ben Wheatley’s demystified Rebecca is a pale imitation of the Hitchcock classic - The A.V. Club

Ben Wheatley’s demystified Rebecca is a pale imitation of the Hitchcock classic - The A.V. Club
Oct 15, 2020 1 min, 20 secs

The dreamlike qualities of Daphne du Maurier’s 1930s bestseller Rebecca and its celebrated Alfred Hitchcock film adaptation are obvious even in a basic description of the premise.

This Rebecca is billed as a new adaptation of the novel, but since the Hitchcock version is largely faithful to du Maurier, much of it plays like a scene-for-scene remake, with tweaks and additions to account for today’s apparently less adventurous tastes in old dark house stories.

The first obvious change is that the unworldly and unnamed protagonist (Lily James) and the widowed Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer) are now basically the same age (though Hammer is actually older than Laurence Olivier was when he played the role in the Hitchcock version).

Lily James, Armie Hammer, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Riley.

In an effort to distinguish itself from previous versions—which include the Hitchcock film, two TV miniseries, and du Maurier’s own stage adaptation—this Rebecca has dressed its characters in the height of mid-1930s fashion; the formerly cobwebby untouched west wing of Manderley is now spotlessly clean and Art Deco.

The screenplay (by Jane Goldman, Anna Waterhouse, and Joe Shrapnel) goes to some lengths to neuter the psychosexual complexes of the characters, and given that these complexes are most of the story, the film inevitably descends into incoherence once the question of what really happened to Rebecca is stated out loud

While Scott Thomas, Dowd, and Sam Riley (as Rebecca’s shady cousin, Jack Favell) get fun one-note roles, James and Hammer are largely tasked with looking unhappy in handsome clothes

In this Rebecca, that state is exasperating boredom

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