Re: What we talked about

Continued from previous post

Thematically, his exploration of identity is widely evident, particularly in Psycho, Vertigo and certainly Marnie. Poor dead Rebecca de Winter is represented only through description by others and a few of her decadent effects throughout the whole of her movie, Mrs de Winter of course, has no name, and no real personality of her own.

Espionage, identity theft, masks, multiple identities and mistaken identities are all explored through both hero (if Norman Bates can be described as a hero) and heroine. Although of course the obsessions with costume, hair and make-up are reserved for the leading ladies. Hitch famously dictating costume down to the very last detail. For example, Kim Novak, who had always refused to wear black shoes for fear of making her calves look fat was told in no uncertain terms by costumier Edith Head that Hitchcock insisted on black shoes, and the grey suit she is pictured in. For his more favoured ladies, those who he saw as Trilby to his Svengali, (or Galatea to his Pygmalian, eventually leading to ‘casting couch scenarios’ the hollywood cliches do tend to pile up) he would even dress their off hours, choosing clothes from Bergdorf Goodman.

For me the Romantic pedigree of Du Maurier’s Rebecca, with it’s junior Jane Eyre heroine, is an interesting choice for Hitchcock. Certainly he wanted to inject more horror into it than he was allowed to, both by Selznick and by the American censors. Who also insisted that a tweaked ending indicate Maxim not a murderer, but a victim of misunderstanding, unlike the book, in which he indeed does pull the trigger but only when manipulated into it by his scheming and terminally ill wife. The standout Hitch moments are his depiction of Mrs Danvers, who becomes an almost supernatural figure, deranged by grief and love, appearing silently and terrifying Fontaine’s milksop ‘coy and simpering’ Mrs de Winter.

A lot has been written about Hitchcock, about Rebecca and about the Hollywood systems which perpetuated the production line of models and starlets into screen goddesses via the male agents, producers and directors who wielded the contracts. I’m more interested in the disturbing and pervasive romantic notions we have inherited from these gothic novelists which remain in popular culture. In my recent research on romance paperbacks indicates that these same characters and scenarios are recycled again and again. Modern day Mills & Boon shows this in it’s characterisation of the male romantic hero, in the sixties he was an older man with a past, in the seventies he was likely to be Greek or Spanish (exotic and exciting, a little bit dangerous) and still generally older, in the eighties and nineties he was in big business, sophisticated and rich, or a spy of some sort, or an oil sheikh (and older), up to the present day, where he is very likely to be a Russian tycoon.

Just as for the Romantics in past centuries the hero is a higher status older man, he is generally sophisticated, rich, well-educated and a loner. He might be difficult, generally unpleasant, unfeeling, angry, emotionally stunted and sexually predatory. But that’s okay, because he’s a bit damaged and has ‘a past’ which you can save him from. Then you’ll live happily ever after. If you must.

Sources:

Donald Spoto – Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies

BBC Arena series Screen Goddesses http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pjlhv

François Truffaut’s comprehensive Hitchcock interviews https://soundcloud.com/filmdetail/sets/the-hitchock-truffaut-tapes

http://www.moviesin203.org/2010/12/hitchcock-and-identity/

Part 1

I’m working on a new film which is going to take me a very long time, as I painstakingly rotoscope black and white footage to edit together a work based on Alfred Hitchcock’s film version of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. The film stars Laurence Olivier as Maxim de Winter, and Joan Fontaine as the otherwise unnamed new Mrs de Winter. Fontaine was not Hitch’s first choice for the rôle, having been selected by David O Selznick, the producer, who saw himself as a starmaker. The audition process for the part was particularly drawn out with 30 actresses considered and rejected, Hitch wanted Margaret Sullavan, Anne Baxter, then only 16, was the staff choice, but Selznick eventually had his way.

Du Maurier’s Rebecca is a troubling read, with it’s central gothic heroine rather insipid and unsympathetic despite her terrors and difficulties. She is the put-upon, gentle, shy and unthreatening epitome of many a romantic novel. Such passivity is also seen in victorian novellas, and in classic romantic heroines in Brontë and the like. You can still see the archetype today, in (perhaps not so) modern romances like Fifty Shades of Grey and the Twilight Saga. Here a passive, (mostly) virtuous heroine who is generally given to the gentle arts of drawing and music, not garish pastimes such as dancing and gambling, is put through various tests of her merits in order to win the love of a dark, brooding and virile man with a hidden, dangerous or shameful past. Through the course of the story, the hero is redeemed of his past and rewarded with a gentle helpmeet and true love.

Rebecca herself is aligned with Rochester’s mad wife in the attic. Possibly gay, certainly a fast woman with loose morals, too beautiful and desirable to be good. Too sexy. And altogether too modern a woman, taking control of her life through her affairs, manipulating her husband and being the centre of attention of the whole county. Perhaps this is why the book is so troubling to read, the most interesting character is at the bottom of the sea for the entirety of the story.

Hitchcock states in his interviews with François Truffaut that the Rebecca is really a book of the last century despite it being published in 1938, (his film was made in 1940) he calls it an old fashioned story, and not ‘a Hitchcock picture’. Du Maurier had already been appalled by Hitchcock’s version of her novel Jamaica Inn, he certainly took licence, adding characters and significantly changing the tone. Now under contract to Selznick however Hitch was forced to produce a more faithful adaptation. Selznick was convinced that the recent huge success of Gone With The Wind was in part due to it’s staying true to Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, and that the readers of the books would surely flock to a faithful screen version, which they did, it was a huge financial and critical success, garnering an oscar for Joan Fontaine’s insipid and coy Mrs de Winter.

Hitchcock’s record with his leading ladies is fascinatingly romantic too. And many of his films are, sometimes alarmingly, autobiographical. His relationship with his wife Alma was almost certainly almost always a sexless one. He saved his romantic feelings and gestures for his favourite actresses. Most notably Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman, and notoriously Tippi Hedren. His fascination with disturbing the composure of an icy blonde, his disgust with his own physical attributes, the sexual inadequacy hinted at in gossip, the scatalogical and sexually perverse schoolboy humour. And the horror of course, and fear, are a heady mix and go some way to explain the complexities of his movies. He was technologically adventurous, artistically gifted and absolutely ruthless in the pursuit of his own vision.

to be cont.