silver nitrate notes

Rebecca and Hitchcock's First American Film

2 jul 2015

Alfred Hitchcock made Rebecca (1940) at Selznick International Pictures, his first American film. The cinematographer was George Barnes (1892-1953), a Selznick contract DP who had photographed Mary Pickford in the silent era and had been working at Goldwyn and Selznick through the 1930s. Barnes won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for Rebecca. Hitchcock was nominated for Best Director and lost to John Ford for The Grapes of Wrath. Rebecca won Best Picture.

The film's tensions, production-wise, are visible in the finished picture. Hitchcock was used to working as the sole authority on his British productions. David O. Selznick, the producer, was used to overseeing every aspect of his films. The two of them fought continuously. Selznick won most of the arguments, including the argument about the ending, which had to be changed from Daphne du Maurier's novel to comply with the Production Code (a murderer cannot go unpunished on screen; Rebecca's death, accordingly, had to become an accident).

Barnes's photography is largely interior. Manderley, the great country house that dominates the film, was built as a massive studio set at Selznick's Culver City lot. Barnes lit it in a low-key register that emphasised the depth of rooms, the vertical stretch of staircases, the way corridors receded into shadow. Joan Fontaine's young second wife is photographed frequently from high angles, pressed into the bottom of the frame, dwarfed by the architecture of the house. Judith Anderson's Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, is photographed at eye level or slightly below, in closer shots, so that she looms against the same architecture that diminishes Fontaine.

The famous sequence is Mrs. Danvers's tour of Rebecca's bedroom, preserved exactly as she left it. Anderson delivers the monologue in a single extended take with the camera tracking her through the room. Barnes lights the sequence from window sources that fall directly on the preserved clothing and objects, while Anderson herself moves through patches of shadow. Mrs. Danvers is the room's custodian; the camera confirms what the dialogue says.

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sources
[1] Truffaut, François. Hitchcock/Truffaut. Simon & Schuster, rev. ed. 1983.
[2] Leff, Leonard J. Hitchcock and Selznick. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987.
[3] McGilligan, Patrick. Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light. Regan, 2003.
[4] du Maurier, Daphne. Rebecca. Gollancz, 1938.