Rebecca - Netflix

[TheWindOnTheMoon]

Anyone else watched Rebecca yet? I watched it with DH last night. Really enjoyed it but it does have quite a lot of changes to the story, so if you know the novel it could be a bit annoying. I didn't mind the changes but DH was a bit

I enjoyed it for what it was; it definitely wasn’t a purist adaptation but I liked the differences. I quite enjoyed that the new Mrs de Winter in the film wasn’t as ‘wet’ as the book character.

I enjoyed it. I wasn’t keen on some of the changes but overall I liked it. The book is utterly superb though imo.

The age gap is so small between the actors - it makes the inequality in the relationship much less believable. Lily J is too well dressed and confident. Still enjoyed it a lot though.

I don't want to lower the tone, but Armie Hammer was definitely a draw.

When Mrs Danvers is twisting the card on a string bird/cage who is the caged bird?

I don't want to lower the tone, but Armie Hammer was definitely a draw.

Not lowering the tone at all. He was lovely

Agree the age difference doesn't show here, where there's a big gap between them in the novel.

Didn't recognise where it was filmed, but the locations were beautiful.

Loved Mrs Danvers. She had just the right amount of sinister and her obsession with Rebecca came across really well.

All in all I thought it was really well done.

In the book, is it made clear that it’s Mrs D who burns the house down? I have no recollection. I enjoyed the movie.

It’s definitely heavily implied that it was Mrs Danvers who burnt the house down.

I’d watched the trailer before I decided to read it so KST was Mrs Danvers in my head.

I had this "argument" with DH after the film. He reckons it isn't clear Mrs Danvers was responsible but who else could it have been? He's reading the sequel written by Susan Hill atm and is trying really hard not to give me spoilers for that

I listened to the audio book of Rebecca read by Anna Massey earlier this year and iirc she played Mrs Danvers in an earlier tv series in the 80s(?).

Interesting. I definitely finished feeling it was her even if it wasn’t explicitly said. They could have had it burning and her looking on rather than dousing it.

Found it really disappointing. Too many alterations for the 'modern audience' - would he have put her over his shoulder on arrival? She would never have driven the car.
Too many portrayals were uni-dimensional - KST was absurdly comic-charactered, No frisson really between the protagonists, having Mrs D spread the paraffin was just clumsy.
Ending - tosh.

2/5.

Thank you @MercedesDeMonteChristo and @TheWindOnTheMoon. I am a fast reader and think I must have skimmed where it was implied that it was her. Other than that, I enjoyed that it was faithful to the book.

@Pan2

Found it really disappointing. Too many alterations for the 'modern audience' - would he have put her over his shoulder on arrival? She would never have driven the car. Too many portrayals were uni-dimensional - KST was absurdly comic-charactered, No frisson really between the protagonists, having Mrs D spread the paraffin was just clumsy. Ending - tosh.

2/5.

You see i think carrying her over the threshold and snogging in the foyer is all a big F you to Danvers organising the formal welcome when he'd asked for it not to happen. He had to have known how much Rebecca meant to Danvers

She seemed to have an awful lot of nice clothes for a ladies companion.

I really enjoyed it, but thought it was a bit of a swerve to make their latter lives into something good, instead of dreary nothingness (as in book).

The scenes at the botanical gardens in France were also the setting for Dirty Rotten Criminals, way back in the day.

I took the end to be broadly faithful, they are travelling, staying in hotels waiting to find a home.

I also think it was made for a modern audience so I can forgive anachronisms to some degree. And I say that as a historian.

I really enjoyed it. The locations, cinematography and costumes were gorgeous. The main performances were good too. It wasn't dark and gothic like the novel or previous versions, but it we found it very watchable.

It was a breath of fresh air to watch a newly released film in the current climate. All the box sets start to feel like homework after a while!

Watched it with DD last night and enjoyed it overall but I felt that the way they handled the "reveal" at the end was all wrong. It was as though they felt that they would make things more dramatic by having Maxim in a cell and his wife rush to London to try to discover what the doctor knew. But that didn't work in my opinion and would have been better left how it was in the book. Also the final scene with Mrs Danvers flinging herself off the cliff I was a bit "Meh" about.

Definitely Mrs Danvers burnt the house down BTW.

Overall I felt they stuck fairly close to the plot. "Rebecca" was one of my favourite books as a teenager and younger woman. When I read it again as an older woman I got incredibly frustrated with Maxim and wanted to give him a good shake!

I agree that the age gap doesn't seem enough. However I was surprised when I looked up the Hitchcock film to find that Laurence Olivier was only 33 when he played Maxim de Winter. In my head he was at least 40 and the girl only about 21 so around a 20 year age gap.

Kirsten Scott Thomas was born to play Mrs Danvers.

I love Lily James (my girl crush if I was going to turn ) but she is more attractive than I think "the girl" is meant to be.

I found it disappointing

Some of the changes didn’t bother me but it lacked atmosphere which central to the story. The music was wrong too

The Hitchcock film is so tense it lacked this

I expected to hate it but didn’t. It was fine. Agree lacking in atmosphere and sometimes subtlety.

3/5

Vapid, Emmy and up atmospheric

It’s enjoyable enough but they are not really Maxim and Mrs de Winter are they.

I had always assumed it was Mrs Danvers who burned down Manderley

I thought it was atrocious.

I didn’t enjoy it, possibly because I’d read the book recently.

I expected it to be awful and just found it boring instead - not sure if that's a win or not. There was absolutely zero tension.

I think because she came across as quite confident throughout (and the power dynamics were different as pp have said), her quiet sad pining attitude felt silly. I was waiting for her to snap at Maxim to bloody talk to her, or tell Mrs Danvers to just fuck off, and I felt that would be a new take and make it more worthwhile as a remake. But no.

Netflix used the same house and location for Enola Holmes, I think, and that had a similar feeling. I don't know what it is that gives a film mood and tension and brilliance, but I feel that they're just churning these things out too fast or something. They sort of miss a central theme or message somehow.

Bloody app destroying all paragraphs, sorry!