David O. Selzinck won his second consecutive Oscar for Outstanding Production (Best Picture) in 1940, following up the transcendent Gone With the Wind with the sublime Rebecca. Directed by Alfred Hitchock, Rebecca took storytelling to new heights, at least as far as the award for Best Picture is concerned. Rebecca had arguably the most sophisticated storyline and complex plot of any of the previous winners. It was a psychological thriller as well as an engaging love story. It had a linear plot that had a strong Hero’s Journey structure, but had at least two main plot twists that kept the audience guessing. This is a film that I had seen a couple of times, but had never really paid particularly close attention to until viewing it again this past weekend, and it is an instructive film for writers, directors and actors.

Rebecca tells the story of a young woman (Joan Fontain) who meets a wealthy, but reclusive widower named Maxim de Winter while on holiday in Monte Carlo. She actally stumbles upon him as he appears to be contemplating leaping from a cliff. He tells her to leave him alone, but something about her intrigues him. The young woman is actually working as a type of traveling secretary/paid companion for another socialite, the obnoxious Edyth Van Hopper, but she takes ill and isn’t in need of having events coordinated so the young woman’s time is spent with Maxim. Just as the young woman is about to leave with Edyth, Maxim asks her to marry him an the most unconventional way, but she accepts. Before taking her leave, Edyth warns the young woman that she’s about to enter into a world for which she isn’t prepared.

Maxim and Mrs. de Winter arrive at Maxim’s childhood home, the sprawling mansion known as Manderlay. Mrs. de Winter is initially intimidated by all of the servants, but none so much as Mrs. Danvers, a cold and cross head of the household who adored Maxim’s late wife Rebecca, and refuses to show any grace or kindness to Mrs. de Winter. The memory of Rebecca is everywhere in the house, with guests, and apparently with Maxim. Everyone that Mrs. de Winter asks in regards to Rebecca tells her that Rebecca was the most extraordinary, beautiful and amazing woman. Mrs. de Winter, being a plane, softspoken girl with such a modest upbringing could never compete.  Mrs. de Winter tries her best to fit in and to make Maxim happy, but she always seems to inadvertantly remind Maxim of Rebecca. What’s more is that Mrs. Danvers will not let the memory of Rebecca fade away. Indeed, all of stationary and all of the linens continue to have an embroidered R in them. The character arc of Mrs. de Winter has her grow from weak to strong, and she finally demands that the house be hers. She tells Mrs. Danvers to remove all of the stationary and all of the bedding. Horrified, Mrs. Danvers tells her that those items belonged to Mrs. de Winter, and defiantly, Mrs. de Winter declares, “I am Mrs. de Winter now!” That moment sets Mrs. Danvers even more against her, and she gets some measure of revenge that will be mentioned below.

For the most part, Maxim shows Mrs. de Winter every kindness, but he can’t go with her when she chases the dog to the boat house near the beach, as Rebecca had been apparently drowned while sailing in her boat and Maxim had to identify her body when it washed up on shore several weaks later. He can’t bear to be near that house. Later, when Mrs. de Winter convinces Maxim to let her organize a masquerade ball, Mrs. Danvers tricks her into wearing a costume that is an exact replica of the last one the Rebecca wore before she was drowned. Maxim completely loses control and humiliates her in front of the other guests, demanding that she remove the costume. Then a distress signal from the ocean reveals a ship in trouble and everyone leaves the party to assist in the rescue. Mrs. de Winter finds Maxim inside the boat house, and he tells her that Rebecca has won. A diver had just found Rebecca’s boat on the bottom of the sea and Rebecca’s body was still inside it. This was no surpirise to Maxim as he confesses to Mrs. de Winter that he put her there. He goes on to tell her that he hated Rebecca. He knew after being married to her for two weeks that he’d made a terrible mistake. She went on to make his life miserable and one night in the boat house she provoked him to the point of no return and before he realized what he had done, he had killed her. So he put her in her sail boat, took it to the ocean, drilled some holes in the hull and let it sink. The woman he identified some time later and who is buried in the family plot was not Rebecca. She was no one. From nowhere.

An inquiry is opened, and Jack Favell, a former lover of Rebecca’s tries to blackmail Maxim because he has a letter that he’s certain proves that Rebecca didn’t commit suicide, as is being perpotrated by Maxim. Favell believes that Rebecca was pregnant with his child, and that Maxim killed her in a jealous rage. They discover that Rebecca saw a doctor in London the day before she died, so they go to see the doctor who tells them that Rebecca wasn’t pregnant, but in fact had cancer. Now the suicide is completely plausible and Maxim is exonerated. Rebecca lied to Maxim about carrying another man’s child in order to goad Maxim into killing her. This is a very sinister thing to do since it’s an indirect form of suicide, and it also forces Maxim to carry this burden with him, potentially to the end of his days. Favell, who is an ally of Mrs. Danvers, calls her up and tells her what happened and that Maxim and the new Mrs. de Winter are now free to live a long and happy life together at Manderlay. Mrs. Danvers, however, has other ideas. She will not allow them to be happy at that house, and she sets the mansion ablaze. Rushing home, Maxim finds Mrs. de Winter, who has escaped, but Mrs. Danvers wasn’t so lucky. They watch as the house collapses upon her.

One thing that struck me while wathching this film over the weekend was how strong of a Hero’s Journey this film had. It also had terrific character growth and beautifully written dialogue. If you’re an aspiring screenwriter, this is a film you should know. The Ordinary World shows the future Mrs. de Winter working for Edyth Van Hopper. The Meeting of the Mentor is essentially the future Mrs. de Winter getting courted by Maxim. The Call To Adventure is when he asks her to marry him. Her Refusal of the Call is manifested by her reluctance to answer him at first and by her not wanting to tell Edyth Van Hopper. She Crosses the First Threshold when she marries Maxim and moves with him to Manderlay. The Tests, Allies and Enemies are revealed as many of the staff and Maxim’s friends try to help her get acclimated. They become her allies. The clear enemy is Mrs. Danvers, whose jealosy of Mrs. de Winter manifests itself in her shoddy treatment of her. There are many tests throughout this stage, most of which Mrs. de Winter fails, like the walk to the boat house, a scene where she breaks a valuable statuette, but is too afraid to tell Mrs. Danvers. Not until she defiantly tells Mrs. Danvers that she is Mrs. de Winter now does she come out on top of a test, and it’s an important character moment as she’s gone from intimidated waif to strong and determined woman. The Approach is the scene in the boat house where Maxim confesses to murdering Rebecca and hiding her body at the bottom of the ocean. The Supreme Ordeal is the inquiry with the coroner as they have to rehash old memories and Maxim nearly loses his temper and his freedom all at once. The Reward is the scene at the Doctor’s office where the doctor reveals that Rebecca had cancer and that suicide was a completely plausible scenario for her death. The Road Back is literal in this film, and it’s the scene where Maxim is rushing home, and he can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. Meanwhile, Mrs. Danvers is appraoching Mrs de Winter, who is sleeping and appears dead, with a candlestick. The Resurection happens when Maxim returns home and finds Mrs. de Winter alive and well, but Manderlay is engulfed in flames. The Return With the Elixir is when we watch the house collapse on Mrs. Danvers, and the dream of Rebecca finally dies with her.

That is a very strong strucure, and the twists that Hitchcock and screenwriters Robert Sherwood and Joan Harrison put into this story are as seamless as they are surprising. They also add huge amounts of drama to the story at a crucial moment. The film is about two thirds of the way through when Maxim admits to killing Rebecca, and the story takes a whole new direction, which heightens the audience’s interest. Then the twist at the end where we find out the Rebecca had cancer and tempted Maxim into killing her as a means of indirect suicide does a couple of things. It gives you sympathy for Maxim that someone could be heartless enough to do that. Discovering that twis also allows Maxim to get away with the murder, which is itself a twist as well. That’s some brilliant storytelling right there, that as I said before, any aspiring screenwriter could learn from and should study.

One other thing I’d like to discuss regarding Rebecca is the characters. There is some outstanding character development going on in this film. Mrs. de Winter, who starts the film nameless, and acquires the name Mrs. de Winter only after she marries Maxim grows from a weak character to a strong one. Maxim goes from a tormented person to a man at peace with his past. Both of the characters experience these arcs concurrently and they happen in ways that are believeable and natural within the confines of the story. Even Rebecca, who we never meet, is a character that we get to know very well. She has a definite character arc throughout the film as we start out only hearing about how wonderful and beautiful and kind she was. By the end of the film, Rebecca has turned into a manipulative, greedy, unfaithful woman who is willing to subject her husband to a lifetime of torment in order to get one last victory over him, even in death. The other thing that all of the characters have is depth. These characters are real people that we can relate to even though we’ve never lived through circumstances remotely similar. These are real people with real problems and we can’t help but be fascinated by their journeys.

Did the Academy get it right?

Once again it was no slam dunk. Even though the competition this year wasn’t as fierce as in 1939, there were still at least three films nominated against Rebecca that would go on to be classics. The Grapes of Wrath was one of the most important films ever released and it made Henry Fonda a star. The Great Dictator was a biting satire from Charlie Chaplin that criticized Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany in a way that few films had up to that point. The Philadelphia Story is one of the great romantic comedies of all time and had some serious star power with Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart in the lead roles.  Those are three certified classics, and The Grapes of Wrath (21) and The Philadelphia Story (51) are on AFI’s list of the top 100 films of all  time. Rebecca, ironically, is not on that list. Personally, I feel that the intricately woven story made Rebecca a worthy winner for Best Picture in 1940, but either of those other films would have been worthy as well. Ultimately, I don’t think it’s a tragedy that Rebecca won (as we’ll discover, the real tragedy occurred the following year). It was an outstanding film, and may or may not have been the best film of 1940.