Rebecca

[xsquared]

It's on Netflix on Wednesday.

Love the book and the Hitchcock version so I'm looking forward to this.
It's a shame that Lily James is in the papers for the wrong reasons though.

@puppymonkey
YES! Aunt Lydia! It was driving me mildly potty about where I'd seen her before!

I enjoyed it, but glad I didn’t pay to see it at the cinema as I planned. I like Lilly James, but it does seem that she can only act one way.

The folk music that was played over two scenes seemed jarring and out of place. Why did a middle aged upper class English gentleman from the 1930s have such a buff body and look far too young?

I loved it; a visual feast. Though, I have only read the book, not seen the Hitchcock adaptation.

I watched this version and then the Hitchcock one on YouTube. Then the Mitchell and Webb hilarious parody.

I don't get the hype arpund LJ and I'm afraid the modern version did not cut it.

I like the Hitchcock version, but did find myself chuckilng at Lawrence Olivier's character and Danvers' melodrama, as brilliant as the actress was.

Is his character such an arse to the new Mrs de Winter in the book, calling her a "silly little fool" etc?

I struggle with how she adores him when he's such a pompous arse. I always struggle though with this dynamic (such as Jane Eyre).

I haven't read the book but I saw the Hitchcock version previously. Of course H was amazing, so it might be fair to say a remake shouldn't be attempted, but this isn't the first remake since H's version and I thought it was great.

I thought the power differential between ages was nicely covered by the heavier focus on class, which also made the Danver's character more interesting as it highlighted how worthy she thought she was, how twisted everyone's thinking was then. And I thought the set scenes were beautiful. It captured the era well. And as for the more feminist ending of a young woman finding her voice, i think it needed that in order to hold its audience, sign of the times, and I liked it.

Anyhoo, I hadn't read the book so I bought it yesterday and i look forward to reading it.

I watched it with my 16 year old daughter. She really enjoyed it and gave it 9/10. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would as I loved the the original. I think Max should have been older, but enjoyed LJ. Mrs Danvers needed to be more menacing. In the original I felt she really loved Rebecca and treated new Mrs DW with contempt.

And as for the more feminist ending of a young woman finding her voice, i think it needed that in order to hold its audience, sign of the times, and I liked it.

I really dislike this idea that classic stories have to be given a superficial 'modern' slant in order to appeal to contemporary audiences. Usually, the opposite is true, as evidenced by the fact that this version got uniformly negative reviews.

There are any number of 'plucky young woman' stories out there. This is not one. 'Rebecca' is a gothic horror, not a romance, nor a 'shy woman finds her voice' story.

Even in the book and the original film, though, the second Mrs DW steps up and finds her voice at the end. As soon as the real body is discovered and Maxim starts falling apart, she’s the one who keeps it together. That’s why he says that line about missing how she used to be when he first met her, she’d lost all her innocence.

OK, watched it now.

I could see how they made the second Mrs DeWinter more assertive, perhaps due to the modern trend to centre stories on empowering women. Which is fine, and is to a certain extent what happens in the book.

But that is especially problematic when they glossed so briefly over what Rebecca did. It's dealt with in a couple of minutes, without all the detail on the extent of Max's devotion to Manderley, his care for his reputation, and the extent to which Rebecca taunted him about that. It came across as "she cheated, therefore she deserved it and she was dying anyway." The new wife finds her voice and uses it immediately to cover up the murder of her predecessor.

Keeley Hawes did the only bit of subtlety in her comments, giving clues to Rebecca's nature and how her beauty and reputation weren't all they were cracked up to be. They skipped the bit where she seduced Frank Crawley.

You could easily get the impression that it was happily ever after for the De Winters. But it isn't. They live an impermanent life on the continent, she has to very carefully manage his life so it is easy and safe etc... Not passionate snogging in Cairo.

For the record I don't believe Rebecca was a feminist saint either, but the fact is that her angry husband murdered her for her transgressions, and her force of character, executed by Danvers, takes his true love from him - Manderley.

When I read Rebecca in my 20’s (about 20 yrs ago!) I thought it was very romantic- handsome man sweeps her off her feet etc. When I reread it a few years ago I just thought it was weird and creepy that he picks up a new bride within days and then ignores her, lies to her etc once back at Mandalay. So tbh I was glad this version was a modern retelling, it made it much more watchable. Even so my 14 yr old daughter still said it seemed odd that they got married so quickly. Likewise with the court case, I thought it seemed a bit more of a likely scenario- I always thought it was a bit unlikely in the book that he just got away with it. So, controversially, I thought the film was pretty good. Even though not the same as the book.

But surely its still creepy? In order to make it a happily ever after, you have to either make Rebecca's death an accident on his part, or make her crimes as bad or worse as they were in the book.

Rebecca in the book was a manipulative shrew who used his nearest and dearest as playthings whilst presenting a beautiful front to the world. Which last I looked, didn't entitle someone to murder you.

This adaptation skated over her worst parts and STILL had him actively killing her. Worst of both worlds!

And as for being modern, previous adaptations went down the "Rebecca tripped and fell" approach and/or left out the fact that she was pregnant, because they at least managed to recognise that a husband killing his wife is not a romantic thing, whatever she's supposed to have done.

It's a tricky thing to get across on screen, and I don't think it's worth doing as a drama if you aren't going to play into the subtleties that Rebecca, Max and the second Mrs De Winter are all pretty bad people in very distinct ways.

Gosh yes! That part of the film and book is still highly dodgy. Just because Rebecca was awful doesn’t mean it’s ok to kill her.

But I think the first part was less ‘creepy older man picking up naive play thing’. But there’s just no way to make him killing his first wife ok! And new wife them covering up for him in a desperate attempt to win his love (rolls eyes).

It’s hardly a feminist text. And now that I’m older and possibly a little wiser, I just don’t like the book. It’s certainly not the deeply romantic novel I thought it was in my 20’s!

Oh, I think it's a HUGELY feminist text. I just don't think that you have to have a "good" woman in a book to make it feminist. It explores what a woman is supposed to be and how she's supposed to behave whilst tricking you into falling for those standards at times - like how at a first read it's really easy to root for her as she covers up a domestic murder. Both Mrs de Winters are extreme types: the dazzling femme fatale and the meek little wife whose power lies in protecting her husband. The book takes a deep but subtle swipe at both extremes.

I can highly recommend My Cousin Rachel as another Du Maurier. It's a masterpiece reading of misogyny, and a highly feminist work - though another one that doesn't oblige itself with the meaning of "feminist" that only allows for positive female representations.