8.3 | / 10 |
Users | 4.7 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
A young bride is terrorized by the memories of her husband's glamorous first wife.
Starring: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders (I), Judith Anderson, Nigel BruceDrama | 100% |
Romance | 52% |
Psychological thriller | 33% |
Mystery | 20% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
Music: Dolby Digital 2.0
Mono is dual-encoded
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Was it fate or uncharacteristic bad judgment which led Alfred Hitchcock to accept David O. Selznick’s entreaties to Hitch
to leave his native England and come to the Promised Land of Hollywood? Hitch had been approached before—several
times in fact—but had managed to resist the lure of untold riches and easy access to the world’s biggest stars. What
changed? Was it the considerable dough Selznick promised to throw at the director to make his move palatable? The
fact that Selznick was obviously extremely well connected to Hollywood royalty, and was in fact still a member, if only by
marriage, of one of the industry’s ruling elite families? Or was it perhaps the fact that Selznick also promised to launch
his vaunted star making machinery behind Hitchcock himself, making the director one of the very few of his craft to
achieve above the title prominence? Hitchcock was a self-promoter par excellence, and this fact may have
played into his decision at least as much as the one he told Richard Schickel, who contributes a delightful commentary
to this new Blu-ray release of Hitch’s first stateside film, and his first one under the producing aegis of Selznick,
Rebecca: namely, that the director simply wanted more equipment to work with.
Hitch and Selznick ended up
mixing like oil and water, and Ingrid Bergman is on record as stating that cameras magically “broke” whenever Selznick
would imperiously stride onto a shooting stage where Hitch was attempting to make a film. As soon as Selznick left, the
cameras just as magically started working again. Selznick, fueled by massive quantities of Benzedrine, ended up
treating Hitch, somewhat ironically, exactly as Hitch later was quoted as saying actors needed to be handled: as cattle,
being herded wherever they belonged. Hitch had been a huge fish in the rather small pond of the British film industry,
and it must have been a serious wake up call to find himself just another cog in the Hollywood machine, but that
doesn’t mean Rebecca doesn’t bear many of the signs of Hitch’s nascent mastery. Rebecca is in some
ways a rather odd property for Hitchcock to want to film (though according to Selznick, the director had in fact
attempted to procure the rights to Daphne DuMaurier’s novel while still in Britain, but wasn’t able to muster the financial
resources that Selznick had at his beck and call). This sort of neo-modern reimagining of Jane Eyre had a lot of
the psychological aspects that would come to define later Hitchcock, but it also features a bumbling, halting heroine,
one completely at odds with the usual Hitchcock Ice Goddess, coolly in control of all she surveys. And the purported
mystery at the heart of the story—did Max DeWinter kill his first wife?—is handled with kid gloves, without any real
shock value and in fact with the same sort of sanguine acceptance of motion picture code rules and regulations that
also hampered Hitchcock’s somewhat similarly themed Suspicion.
Rebecca is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Fox-MGM with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. Of the three Hitchcock films being released simultaneously by Fox-MGM, Rebecca boasts the strongest overall transfer, probably due in no small part to the esteem in which the film has been held for so many years, leading to generally better preservation through the intervening decades since its original release. The source elements here are in fairly fine shape, though as with the two other Hitch releases, there are still occasional scratches and other damage that can easily be seen, and in fact Rebecca has a doozy of a scratch early in the film across Olivier's face as he stares at the roiling sea water right as he meets Fontaine. On the whole though, this transfer boasts really excellent sharpness and clarity and it also reproduces Hitch's mist-strewn shots of Manderley effortlessly. Contrast is very strong throughout this presentation, with deep, lustrous blacks and impressive variegation in gray scale. Grain is natural looking, with the notable exception of the film's opticals (which are fairly plentiful), when added grain and dirt adds a veiled layer over the image, as is to be expected.
Rebecca's original mono soundtrack is delivered via a lossless DTS-HD Master 2.0 track that bears little signs of age, other than a bit of expected boxiness in overall tonal quality. This is one of the best, if not the best, sounding Blu-rays in this current slate of Hitch releases, with nice detail shining through, including lots of great effects like the surging sea water in the first scene and then of course the crackling flames in the final sequence. Dialogue and Franz Waxman's evocative score (also available as an isolated track, with effects) sound crisp and clear, though lower frequencies are just slightly clipped at times. As was the case with Notorious, Rebecca shows few signs of the hiss that was quite audible on the Spellbound release.
Those expecting a bristling, thrilling experience in Rebecca may find themselves perplexed, at least on first viewing. This is one of the slowest of Hitch's films, suitably novelistic considering its source elements, but also a film that seems tonally at odds with itself. This is certainly an odd Best Picture contender, let alone winner, and Hitch fans can probably provide a laundry list of other films by the Master which might be better thought of both as films and as representative of Hitchcock's inimitable style. If Rebecca is approached more as a Selznick film, things fall at least a little more into place, as this bears the glossy, deliberate style that Selznick seemed to gravitate toward. Nonetheless, despite its flaws (and Rebecca is a flawed film, unfortunately), Rebecca demands to be seen if for no other reason than that it gives such a sterling representation of Hitchcock at one of the major crossroads in his career. The Hitchcock-Selznick "marriage" was a stormy, unhappy one, and astute viewers can almost sense that discontent seeping out even in this, their first collaboration. But even though Hitchcock really couldn't stand the producer, Selznick at least got the director over here to American soil, where he would go on to create some of his most iconic masterpieces. Is Rebecca one of those masterpieces? Probably not, but it has some amazing performances and is full to the brim with mood. This Blu-ray looks and sounds excellent and it comes Highly recommended.
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