Trading Gothic for Gloss: Netflix’s Rebecca is a Pale Shadow of Hitchcock’s 1940 Film

When Hitchcock made Rebecca in 1940, he chose not to show Rebecca’s character but emphasized her indomitable presence by how other characters behaved onscreen, like where the dogs sat waiting for Rebecca even after her death, how Mrs. Danvers made the dinner menu keeping Rebecca’s preferences in mind, how the rooms at Manderley were decorated and kept exactly the way she liked them. Rebecca’s presence, even though she is never shown onscreen, is always more pronounced, despite the new Mrs. De Winter taking her place.

Wheatley follows Hitchcock’s choice and shows Rebecca’s impact on the narrator without ever showing Rebecca’s character onscreen. Therefore, the film is pitch-perfect in the parts it focuses on the narrator’s (Lily James) curiosity about the woman who is omnipresent at Manderley even after her death. Lily James as the second Mrs. De Winter delivers refined and measured performance, breathing vulnerability into her character, and brilliantly depicting how her insecurity leads to jealousy towards Rebecca, which in turn becomes an obsession. However, after that, as she becomes more isolated and even contemplates suicide, Wheatley falters because he cannot follow Hitchcock’s black and white template to create tension onscreen or use his foreboding music which would appear too dated to the current audience. So, he abruptly goes into a surrealistic montage, which often features in pop videos, for almost a minute trying to show how the mental state of the narrator is in complete disarray. However, that montage is so jarring and non-aligned with the visual imagery that he uses in the rest of the film, that you almost get looped out of the story, and care very little about the narrator’s plight.