 Hey guys it's Liana and I'm here to do a talk about Rebecca by Daphne de Morier. Also here to talk about the various adaptations of Rebecca. I say various, I mean the Hitchcock one and then the one. I've seen snippets of the made for TV one, which I can't really address because I haven't really watched it. So, Rebecca by Daphne de Morier, 5 out of 5 stars loved this book, adored this book. I had seen the Hitchcock movie version of it several times before reading it. I hadn't seen it that recently before reading it. I'd seen it enough to where I remembered the broad stroke and I remembered liking it, but it wasn't super fresh in my brain when I picked up the book. But the main impetus for picking up the book was really wanting to finally read it, which I had intended to for some time before watching the new adaptation, which I did and I did not really care for. So, Rebecca, quick review slash synopsis. Rebecca is a classic for a reason. It was written in the 1920s, 30s by Daphne de Morier. So for when it was written it was a contemporary book. And it follows the story of an unnamed narrator who is this young, kind of friendless, poor girl who's in Monte Carlo because she's a paid ladies companion to this kind of gauche, really unlikeable, but ultimately harmless rich lady. Because of this rich lady's meddling and nosiness, she's the one that spots this famous, extremely wealthy widower, Maxim de Winter, who famously owns Manderley, this great estate, and who famously, recently, lost his first wife, Rebecca, in some tragic way, which remains unclear for a large portion of the book. And it's one of the mysteries our narrator is trying to piece together because everyone seems to know the story of Maxim and Rebecca, except for her, the new wife, because he marries this young girl. He meets her in Monte Carlo, he's quite a bit older than her, and he finds her youth quite refreshing and charming. And she's very unwilling to believe that he genuinely loves her, but for whatever reason he wants to marry her, and she's like, well, I'm poor and I'm super in love with you. And yep, sure, let's get married. So he takes her to Manderley, where things go downhill very quickly, because Manderley is filled with metaphorical ghosts, i.e. the memory of everything that's happened to Maxim before he met our narrator that our narrator knows nothing about and is too scared and too unsure of herself to really ask him about. So he finds a lot of things triggering, and the house is littered with things that keep the memory of Rebecca alive, like her R is monogrammed on all of their stuff, all of her old correspondences everywhere. The housekeeper, who's really the one haunting Manderley, was obsessed with her former lady, Rebecca, keeps telling the new Mrs. de Winter all the way, is that the former Mrs. de Winter used to handle things. The book is this slow, creeping kind of gothic novel where you follow our narrator, who's very much out of her depth and very much has impostor syndrome, and is trying to figure out what exactly went down between Maxim and Rebecca, what their relationship was like, what he sees in her, because it's becoming very clear how different she is from Rebecca, so she keeps measuring herself up to this memory of a person she's never met before, and has conflicting reports on, depending on who she talks to, what Rebecca was really like, although everyone seems to agree that Rebecca was the kind of person that you don't forget. But there does seem to be something also more to how Rebecca died. So it's kind of this slow, creeping character study gothic mystery that I devoured. I loved the book so much, and I have to say, the Hitchcock version is extremely loyal to the book, and interestingly, I always think of these as old books and adaptations of them as being a really new thing that happens way after the fact. Like if somebody adapts Jane Eyre, like Charlotte Bronte didn't even know movies would be a thing ever. So like those are two really divorced things. However, Hitchcock adapting to Maury's work was like nowadays adapting Harry Potter or adapting to Hunger Games. Like the author is alive and well and just wrote it. So this book, like the movie that Hitchcock made came out only a few years after this book was published, which was kind of shocking to me to realize that, that Daphne de Maury was around to see it. Like not just around, but like she literally just written the thing. So it wasn't yet this like known classic that everyone has been talking about for years and years and years. It was like adapting the Hunger Games. And so Hitchcock I know rather famously or infamously was really frustrated with American, the American film industry because it required him to censor the book. It required him to change the story in order to be less salacious or less negative or whatever. So like he was really frustrated with that, but he did work his way around it and like considering the constraints and considering how frequently, especially older movies, all the new ones as well, but especially older movies tended to not be true to their source material. Like the old black and white version of Pride and Prejudice with Laurence Olivier, who was also in Rebecca, is like nothing like the book Pride and Prejudice. I like that movie. It's a lot of fun, but it's very different from Pride and Prejudice, the book. So Hitchcock did actually a brilliant job of really adapting Rebecca in a way that's true to the book. And he had the added trouble of having to work around the censors in old Hollywood. And he did a really good job of working around that and still staying true to the feeling, the tone and the message of the book. So Bravo to Hitchcock as an excellent movie. The book is a classic for a reason and that movie is a classic for a reason. And I recommend both. Now, a new adaptation would not have those kind of censorship restrictions that Hitchcock was faced with. So you would imagine that nowadays you would be because of like the better technology for filmmaking and the more freedom that is given to filmmakers to put anything really on screen, you shouldn't really be able to make the shit out of Rebecca now. You're unleashed. Go ahead and make it true and salacious and dark and whatever. And the new adaptation, it's like it was adapted by somebody that had only ever read the cliff notes. And this is the type of story where it's not plot driven, it's entirely character driven. So you really can't cliff notes it because like if you cliff notes it, yeah, here's a bear outline of plot events, but the plot events are really not the point. And if you change any of the details of the day to day, of the small events of the book that define these characters' lives, identity and memory, then you've missed it. You've completely missed what Rebecca is about. And that's how the new adaptation felt. It felt like, yeah, we got sort of the basic plot beats down, but the whole point of the story is entirely missing because it isn't, the point of Rebecca isn't that two people meet in Monte Carlo, fall in love and move to Manderley. The point of that whole setup in the beginning is the fact that it's setting up that our narrator is really unclear and uncertain and uncomfortable about what exactly Maxim sees in her. The film makes it entirely unambiguous that Maxim, played by the way too young-looking army hammer and the way too old-looking Lily James is our narrator, they are way too close in age. Part of the story, this isn't just like, oh, well, you know, we like it better when they're closer in age. It is relevant to the story that there is an enormous age gap between them. It is kind of the point of the story. You're supposed to get this feeling that this young narrator who doesn't know, hasn't seen anything of the world, hasn't seen anything of life, isn't really comfortable in her own skin yet. She's that young and poor and inexperienced. And here's Maxim the Winter who's really like, he's already had a life because he's 40 years old. That's 20, he's almost double her age. And he's already had a wife who died. He already did the whole had a wedding, started building a life with somebody else, has settled in his own skin, knows who he is, and is kind of gruff, but also very casually confident because of his wealth and experience and age and position in society. This disparity between them is the point of the story. It is on that that everything hinges. And the movie immediately strips that away. It immediately makes it completely clear to us that Maxim is very much into the narrator. He's very affectionate. They're very friendly with each other. They're always like hugging and kissing. And he's always like giving her little winks and like he's being really like chummy to the point where you're like, if the narrator doubts his affections for her, then she's got to be the most insecure person in the world. Whereas both in the book and in the Laurence Olivier adaptation, you can tell that he likes her, but he's still very distant and quite cold. And he can say things that are, when he makes fun of her, it's a little bit mean. Like he's not abusive, but he's just kind of, he's kind of patronizing, which only adds, it piles onto the already present age and class disparity. And the fact that he kind of like pats her on the head and is kind of patronizing, only adds to that. And it's that upon which that we build to really have the narrator really doubt herself. Like she's already like uncertain and that she gets to Manderley where like there's the memory of Rebecca everywhere and she's already really uncertain about how he feels about her and why he even married her. And then Rebecca's everywhere and she's like, am I supposed to live up to this or not? Or like, am I just a pet to him? Am I like the dog? Like that she's like completely losing it in her own head because of this, which isn't possible or believable in the new movie because they're like, it's a marriage of equals other than the money thing. He's clearly into her. They seem to be close in age. They seem to be comfortable with each other. And my mom was like, well, you know, for a modern audience they wanted to make it, you know, it's more in poor taste to have such a big age disparity. Then I'm like, well, then you don't want to adapt Rebecca. That's what Rebecca is about. It's not like a bug. It is a feature. It is what the story is about. So you just cannot adapt it. That's like if you adapted Othello but decided to make Othello white. And we're like, oh, we just decided, you know, it would be easier if like Desdemona and Othello were both white. And you're like, that's like literally the point of Othello is that he is black and like how that affects everything. So if you don't want to have a movie where the main characters who are romantically involved have a huge age disparity and the main female character has very little agency and is very doubting of herself and the older man is kind of mean and controlling. If you don't want to tell a story like that then you don't want to adapt Rebecca. That is what Rebecca is about because because because because with like trying not to be spoilery there's a point in the book where all of this kind of comes to a head. And because we've Daphne de Morier and Hitchcock so expertly kind of let us down this path of more and more doubt, of more and more uncertainty, of more and more discomfort and imposter syndrome and just like psyching out the narrator and the reader that only get to this point in the book and in the Hitchcock movie where everything comes to a head and things are being brought to the surface that is a huge and critical moment in both the book and the Hitchcock movie that is it works so well and it is such again without spoilers like it's just been very clearly building to this point and if for that reason that point is just so powerful and it is not at all powerful or even really in any way different from the rest of the movie in the new one because we didn't really get to that point we weren't really getting psyched out we weren't really doubting ourselves so much so by the time you get to that point it doesn't really like we haven't gone down this journey so it just falls flat doesn't work doesn't have the same weight it's it's that's the plot to Rebecca it isn't the things that happen because the things that happen do happen in the new one they need they get an area they go to Manderley there's Rebecca stuff everywhere we kind of unravel the mystery of what happened between him and Rebecca before the narrator came into it those events happen but that's not what Rebecca is about Rebecca is about the emotional and identity journey of the narrator and the narrator has to be doubting herself and be uncertain and uncomfortable and demure and lacking in agency in order for that to work because that is the story that is what it's about so I just and it's really beautiful in the new adaptation I mean they filmed it in beautiful in beautiful locations the costumes are great it's very art deco it's very stylish I love a lot of the cinematography a lot of the shots of the house um there's really artful shots of you know the narrator in the house and finding things and Armie Hammer and Lily James are really beautiful people they have chemistry like they look good together but that's just it's not Rebecca it's just not how whereas the Hitchcock version like Laurence Leivigay like straight up Maxim de Winter he's legit that's how I would picture Maxim de Winter like yes I'd see in the movie first but like either way like he's absolutely playing that role the way he should he's the perfect choice for it you can see why she would fall for him because he's very handsome and he's charming when he wants to be but he's also quite removed austere patronizing like he's a he's a tough nut to crack and because of the limitations placed on Hitchcock he needed an actor that could bring some subtlety to the role and sort of say the things that Hitchcock wasn't allowed to say overtly and Laurence Leivigay the livers Laurence Leivigay absolutely filled in those gaps for Hitchcock and that's why it works and uh I want to say Fiona Joan Fontaine who plays the narrator in they were in the Hitchcock movie she's absolutely fantastic at first being this ingenue who's I mean I think she was she was actually older obviously the narrator is supposed to be but the way she plays the role still brings to the forefront and really puts the the viewer in mind of a person who is younger who is uncertain who is out of their depth and they they have great chemistry you can see that they would have affection for each other but it is uncertain it is not of equals there is this imbalance of power of experience of wealth of place puts them and their marriage and everything off kilter and it is so expertly done in the film by Hitchcock in a way that you would think that nowadays we'd only be able to do even better because we can really get those like close-ups of people like cinematography can do a lot of things it didn't do back then we can really play some tricks with the camera we can really have the characters be as as dark as they need to be to really be true to the book and yet the new one is completely missed to the point never a backup and like honestly it didn't war to try to clean it up then the Hitchcock version which was told that it needed to clean it up I just I don't understand I don't and I think the choice of R.M.A. Hammer and the lead James when I first saw that I already was like they seem a bit too close and age for that to be appropriate however I do think it's in the wheelhouse of both those actors to play those roles more the way that Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier did were you feel the age difference even if there isn't really that age difference present so much but the way that they were instructed and directed it's they don't play it that way they play it where they're more like you'd see in a rom-com nowadays where they get to know each other and they like each other and there's some communication but she's confident and they bring right in a bunch of scenes for her to have more agency and to have more hoodspot and I'm like I understand the desire to have females portrayed as having agency nowadays but then again don't adapt Rebecca because the point of Rebecca is to have this character in the beginning be completely lacking in self-confidence it doesn't work if she's confident it doesn't that's not Rebecca anyway yeah let me know the comments down below if you've read Rebecca if you've seen the different versions of it and what you think of the different versions of it I also would like to just briefly plug and highly commend to you if you have seen the Hitchcock version well I recommend you watch the Hitchcock version just generally you should absolutely watch it and then if you have seen it or if you now will see it my favorite British sketch comedy show they did a sketch that was based on the old Hitchcock Rebecca and it is so funny I've watched that sketch so many times and I show it to people all the time the premise of the sketch is that in old Hollywood the old Hollywood producer said if you're making a movie called Rebecca you better have a name called Rebecca in it and so they said well in the first cut they did it that that way and where the instead of being an unnamed narrator the main character is Rebecca and I'll make you that doesn't work it's a really funny sketch if you've seen the Hitchcock Rebecca because it's also making fun of kind of the slightly more dramatic tone of old black and white movies and it's hysterical I highly recommend anyway let me know in the comments down below all the things Rebecca related Daphne de Maury related old Hollywood versus new Hollywood all of the things I post videos on Saturdays other random times as well but definitely Saturdays so well like and subscribe and I'll see you when I see you bye