The Great Alfred Hitchcock Rewatch: From Rebecca to Saboteur

Welcome back to the Great Alfred Hitchcock rewatch!  Today's theme is Coming to America, because that's the phase of Hitchcock's career that we're in.  After making it in the British film industry, Hollywood came a knocking and Hitchcock went to Hollywood.

Previous Installments

Intro Post

The Final Five Movies

The Wrong Man to The Birds

Dial M for Murder to The Man Who Knew Too Much

Rope to I Confess

Shadow of a Doubt to The Paradine Case

Here are today's batch of movies, and as usual we will be talking about them in the order that I saw them, which is reverse order.

Rebecca (1940)

Foreign Correspondent (1940)

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941)

Suspicion (1941)

Saboteur (1942)

So what do we have to look forward to in today's movies?

• One extraordinarily great movie (Rebecca)
• Two movies that are rough drafts of a later movie (Foreign Correspondent and Saboteur).  
• A movie that Hitchcock was not allowed to make in the way that he wanted (Suspicion)
• A screwball comedy, because when you think screwball comedy you think Hitchcock (Mr. and Mrs. Smith)
• It's Oscar season!  Rebecca won Best Picture in 1940 and Joan Fontaine won Best Actress for Suspicion in 1941.  Hitchcock's movies were often nominated but these are the only wins.
• Remember how we've been tracking if a movie has implied gay and lesbian characters and we've come across a few gay subtexts?  Well friends, tonight is Ladies Night!!!
• When it comes to familiar faces, I wanted to acknowledge that there are quite a few smaller roles in these movies that have the same cast of players.  I didn't list out everyone since we're getting into increasingly obscure names.

Spoiler rating for this post: Medium.  I blabbed about a well known plot point of Suspicion, which I've mentioned a few times before.  We're going to dish on book vs movie for Rebecca, which means that we're going to tell all.  I put the spoiler talk between lines of 🚨🚨🚨 so that you can skip these sections if you don't want to know.

Saboteur (1942)

General plot summary and trivia

The story opens in an airplane factory is Los Angeles.  Barry and his friend Ken are heading to the cafeteria when they bump into another worker who they haven't seen before.  The man drops some paperwork that he is carrying, and Barry sees an envelope just long enough to see that the man's name is Frye.  Barry and Ken apologize and help pick up the papers, but Frye gets a 'tude and takes off.  Barry sees a $100 bill on the ground, and finds Frye to return it to him.  Frye continues with the 'tude.

All of a sudden a fire breaks out, and Barry, Ken, and Frye rush to the scene.  Frye hands Barry a fire extinguisher, but Ken grabs it and runs into the blaze and all at once the the fire becomes much worse and we see Ken go up in flames.

Barry is questioned afterwards, and is told that there is no employee at the plant named Frye.  The fire became worse because the extinguisher was filled with gasoline, and although no one saw Frye give Ken the extinguisher, everyone saw Barry pass it to Ken.  In one instant Barry goes from grief stricken friend to being accused of being the Worst Human Being Ever.

Barry's only hope is to find Frye, and he is able to remember the address on the envelope that he saw.  He starts off on his quest, and there is never a dull moment.  Hitchhiking, handcuffs, the circus, a blonde, a cross country trip to New York, and a memorable visit to the Status of Liberty ensue.

Let's take a look!

What I think of the movie

• Before: Good memories
• After: I really really like it, very close to a love with a few caveats.

I've seen Saboteur a few times, but I wasn't as familiar with it as some of the other Hitchcock movies.  The opening of the movie really packs a punch: we get to hang out with Barry and Ken long enough to like them, so when Ken dies, it feels like we've lost a friend.  The crime becomes very personal to us, so when Barry gets accused, we feel for him and we're firmly on his side.

From there, my next thought was "wait a minute, I've seen this movie before."  Let's review the plot: a good looking man is accused of murder so he goes on the run to find a mysterious man who can clear his name, he meets a blonde, the chase takes him across the country, and the climax takes place on a national landmark.

Hitchcock you sly dog!  Saboteur is an early draft of North by Northwest!  The story also has a lot in common with The 39 Steps, so it is all things that we've seen before and will see again.  But just because everything was familiar didn't make it any less good.

Here are the caveats that I'm less thrilled about:

• There is a brazen lift from The Bride of Frankenstein.  In BOF, the monster is on the run and takes refuge in a cabin with a blind man, who "sees" the human side and not the monster.  In Saboteur, Barry is handcuffed and goes on the run, and no one will help him because the handcuffs are a giveaway that he's wanted by the police.  He finds refuge in a cabin with a blind man who doesn't know that he's handcuffed.  I don't mind Hitchcock copying himself, but it makes me raise my eyebrows to see him rework someone else's material.
• The other caveat is a product of the movie's time.  The action stops every once in a while for long rambling speeches about patriotism.

It's not a good or a bad thing, but the way that the war is or isn't discussed is interesting.  We're watching a 1942 movie in 2025, so we fill in the blank that it's early WWII and that the bad guys are German.  However the movie never tells us this.  The late 1930's to December 7, 1941 was an awkward time for current events in movies.  We weren't at war yet and American movies needed to make box office world wide, so the norm was to pretend that everything was fine and to say nothing that would prevent a movie from being released and making money in other countries.  One of the bad guys in Saboteur has a German accent, but the country is never mentioned.  Who are the people behind the sabotage?  They are referred to as Fifth Columnists.  There is one line in a hitchhiking scene where someone asks Barry why he's not in the army, but that's the only direct war reference that I caught.

Is there a MacGuffin? Frye is the MacGuffin.  The character is a complete blank slate.  We never get to learn anything about him at all, which makes him all the more chilling.

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  Yes!!! FINALLY!!!  Barry is handcuffed for a good portion of his time on the run which isolates him because he has to figure out how to be seen in public without showing the cuffs.  We'll be revisiting this topic in both fun and not-fun ways in movies to come.

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  Yes

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area? No, this time we're in Southern California.

Does a character have Mommy Issues? No

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  YES!!!!!  Right now my working thesis is that it is version 3 of 4 of this story: the arc is The 39 Steps - Foreign Correspondent - Saboteur - NxNW.  However, I need to watch further back in the canon to finalize the list because I know there are a few other spy movies out there.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Robert Cummings is Barry.  We last saw him as Mark in Dial M for Murder.
• Norman Lloyd is Frye.  We last saw him in a small, unremarkable role in Spellbound.  This was his first Hitchcock movie, and he was a producer on the Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV show.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Yes

Rate the Hitchcock cameo!  Meh, he's in a crowd somewhere.  I wouldn't have noticed it if not for the Youtube video showing all of his cameos.  The word that I heard is that his original cameo was of him talking in sign language with a woman, and him signing something to her that made her slap him, and the censors told the editors to leave that footage on the cutting room floor.

Suspicion (1941)

General plot summary and trivia

Lina and Johnny meet on a train.  She is a plain woman on the verge of spinsterhood, and he is a sexxy rouge.  A sexxy rogue who takes an interest in Lina.  

We know that Johnny is bad news.  He doesn't work, he's a liar, his ethics are slippy, and that's just in the first few minutes of meeting him.  But he turns his charms on Lina, and she thinks, how bad can he really be?  Yep, they get married.

Strangely getting married does not fix any of the problems, and Johnny gets up to more trouble.  The longer things go on, the darker the trouble gets.  Someone that they know dies, and while the police don't see it, it's clear to Lina that the evidence points to Johnny.  And things just get worse when Lina finds out that Johnny has been making inquires with their insurance company about her life insurance policy.  Then he starts getting buddy buddy with a friend of theirs who is a mystery writer and starts asking her about the details on poisons.  Oh crap, her husband is going to kill her.

I've kind of already spilled the tea on this, but we'll throw up the 🚨🚨🚨 so that you can skip if you don't want to know

 

🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨

Suspicion was based on a novel called Before the Fact, which is about a wife who learns that her husband is going to kill her, but she's so in love with him that she decides that life isn't worth living without him, so she "drinks the kool-aid" and becomes an accessory to her own murder.  Hitchcock was all over this, and wanted to get an especially charming leading man to play the killer.  His choice was Cary Grant, who really wanted to play a darker role.

There was a censorship issue, because the standards dictated that crime must be punished, so the way that Hitchcock handled that is that Lina comes to the realization that she can't live without Johnny, but also that Johnny can't be left at large to kill again, so she writes a letter to her mother telling her everything, and then seals the envelope.  Johnny comes upstairs with a glass of poisoned milk, and she asks him to mail the letter and then she drinks the milk.  The last scene of the movie is Johnny putting the letter in the mailbox.  Aha problem solved!  

What Hitchcock could not overcome was the front office issue.  The studio execs said no to Killer Cary Grant.  So the ending was changed to Lina thinking that Johnny is going to kill her but then finding out that aw gee he never was and the only thing that he ever did was to steal money so he decides to turn himself into the police to keep in compliance with the censorship dictates that crime does not pay.  He and Lina set off to live happily ever after because he's Cary Grant.

🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨

What I think of the movie

• Before: Meh
• After: Like in spite of the ending

Suspicion has all of the great Hitchcock trademarks and great actors.  The chemistry between Lina and Johnny is pretty hot.  We understand why she's into him, and we're inclined to hope for the best as we grab our popcorn and watch the worst unfold.  Even with the ending that wasn't what Hitchcock wanted, this is a fun ride.

Let's take a little peek:

Is there a MacGuffin? No

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  No

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area? No

Does a character have Mommy Issues? Lina's dad is one cold fish.

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  Yes.  It was not Hitchcock's first time at the rodeo of trying to make a big screen heartthrob into a killer.  He wasn't allowed to do it with Cary Grant in 1941 and he wasn't allowed to do it with Ivor Novello in 1926.  Lina and Johnny take a wild ride along a mountain road that echos the ride in North by Northwest.

Adhoc tracking point: does the movie have implied gay or lesbian characters?  Yes!!!  It's a delightfully unexpected "show don't tell" moment.  Johnny and Lina are friends with Isabella, a famous mystery author.  They go to dinner at her house with Isabella's brother and a woman who wears a man's suit and tie.  The character is never identified, but the implication is that she is Isabella's boo.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Joan Fontaine is Lina, and we'll be seeing her again in Rebecca.  She won an Oscar for the role, making her the only actor to ever win an academy award for a Hitchcock performance.
• Hello Cary Grant in his Hitchcock debut!
• Nigel Bruce is Johnny's friend, and we'll be seeing him again in Rebecca.  You know him as Dr. Watson in the 1940s Sherlock movies.
• Sir Cedric Hardwicke is Lina's dad.  He was also in Rope, and at the time I didn't realize that he had been in another Hitchcock movie so I decided to be mature and edit out one of my all time favorite Rude Anecdotes of Old Hollywood.  Well, since he's back I'm taking it as a sign from the universe to let it rip.  Sir Cedric was a very prolific character actor who was in one billion classic movies, but as the name implies, he had a reputation for being pompous and stuck up.  This earned him the nickname Sir Seldom Hardprick.
• Hey Leo G. Carroll in a small role as Johnny's boss!!!  By my count this is the fifth time we've seen you in a Hitchcock movie.  I wonder if we'll be seeing you again in this post?
• Isabelle Jeans has a small role as a society lady who is familiar with Johnny's character.  Hold on until we get to 1927 and she'll be the star of the show in Easy Virtue.
• Hitchcock's dog appears in the movie as Lina and Johnny's dog.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Yes, if you want to show them a very dysfunctional and gaslighty relationship.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo!  He is shown mailing a letter at the village postbox.  As we discussed in the spoiler section, letters were meant to play a significant part of the story, so his cameo is a nod to the mail aspect.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941)

General plot summary and trivia

We are firmly in the world of screwball comedy, where everything is a little wacky and this movie is no exception.  David and Ann Smith have been married for a few years, and have had their ups and downs, but they have rules to make their marriage work.  You may have heard the saying "never go to bed angry", but David and Ann's rule is "do not leave your (palatially large) bedroom if you are in the middle of a fight".  The movie opens on day three of a bedroom hole up and we get to sit in on the reconciliation.

David goes to work after the previously mentioned three day absence, and during the course of the day, David and Ann learn separately that there was a technicality that means that their marriage was not legal.  This is spicy stuff for 1941, but they are both told that it's fine, they just need to get remarried.

Well, things break down, they have another fight, and Ann decides that actually the single life is looking pretty good.  She kicks David out, gets a job, and starts keeping company with his business partner.  How will David get her back?

What I think of the movie

• Before: Don't remember it, no opinion
• After: Meh

My opinion of the 1941 screwball comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith is identical to my opinion of the 1966 spy thriller Torn Curtain.  The movie is a solid meh but it has one really great scene that makes the whole experience worthwhile.  Torn Curtain's magic scene is when the hero has to kill a bad guy with no weapon and without making any noise, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith's magic scene is the night that David and Ann try to recreate their first date.  Ann wears the same outfit, which is now too tight.  They go to the same restaurant, which is, to put it mildly, not like they remember from the old days.  It's a laugh out loud, very relatable, and very poignant moment.  Apart from that, Mr. and Mrs. Smith is your typical screwball comedy.  If you're into that, I don't see why you wouldn't like this movie.

Is there a MacGuffin? No

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  No

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area? No

Does a character have Mommy Issues? No

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  No

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Carole Lomdard is Ann.  She was a huge screwball comedy star, and as much as I hate the genre, she's a pleasure to watch.  In her personal life she was Mrs. Clark Gable and shortly after this movie was made, she went on a tour to sell war bonds.  On the way home she died in a plane crash.  Mr. and Mrs. Smith was her second to last movie.
• Gene Raymond is David's business partner/the other fella after the marriage hits the skids.  You probably don't know the name, but he was a popular actor who IMO was not a bad looking man at all, so I always enjoy seeing him.  But I have a bone to pick with Hitchcock!  Raymond was blonde, but for some reason he dyed his hair black for this movie, which is not a great look for him.  Hitchcock was notorious for having a thing for blondes, so I don't appreciate him taking away my fun for this movie.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? If you want to bore them out of their minds, then yes.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo!  It's alright.  On a night when both David and the other fella get sent home from Ann's apartment, they walk out and leave in different directions.  Hitchcock walks by in the background.

Foreign Correspondent (1940)

General plot summary and trivia

It's the summer of 1939 and we're in the editor's office of a big US newspaper.  The editor has gotten yet another weak tea news bulletin from his Europe foreign correspondent and decides to shake things up.  He pulls Johnny Jones off the police beat and tells him to go to London and give him some stories worth printing.  Johnny doesn't know anything about Europe or world events, but he's gung ho for the assignment.

Things start off on a boring note for Johnny.  He is given the pen name of Huntley Haverstock and has to wear a bowler hat to fit in with his peers, and the movie has him continuously losing and chasing after the hat.  Just as he is about to fall asleep, a diplomat that he was interviewing is assassinated in front of him and he chases after the killer.  From there the chase is on all over Europe to find the bad guys.  Spoiler: Johnny does not turn in any weak tea news stories.

Foreign Correspondent addresses the start of WWII, and the final scene was rewritten based on current events.  Referring back to the discussion on Saboteur, we get one mention of Hitler and see a headline with the word Germany in the title when war is declared, but otherwise the nationality and motives of the den of spies is never discussed.

Let's take a look!

What I think of the movie

• Before: Good memories
• After: Love it!

I remembered that I had liked Foreign Correspondent, and as soon as things got going, I laughed when I realized why.  There are some similarities to The 39 Steps and there is a nod to The Lady Vanishes, but it's basically another early draft of North by Northwest.  The only difference is that Johnny is never accused of murder.  It's serious, it's suspenseful, it's funny, and it's on the cutting edge of current events.  This movie is catnip to me.

As a bonus, there is a scene on a plane where some of the characters are in first class and some are in coach, and seeing the difference between 1940's plane travel and today is priceless.  Let's just say that 1940s coach still quite a step up from today's first class.

Is there a MacGuffin? No

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  No.  Just a note that the video I linked describes Johnny as a wrong man, but only in the "I walked in on something that I wasn't expecting and now I'm a part of it" sense.  He is never accused of a crime, which is my Wrong Man standard.

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area? No

Does a character have Mommy Issues? No

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  Yes!  It's like The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes had a baby.  

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

I'm going to go on record and declare the cast of Foreign Correspondent to be Best Hitchcock Casting ever, possibly Best Movie Casting Ever.  None of these names are going to be familiar, but if this movie was just the actors sitting around reading the telephone book it would still be worth watching.

• Joel McCrea is Johnny.  You don't know the name, but he's a terrific actor who fits the bill of Old Timey Movie Star and looks like a real person.  You could slot McCrea into the latest Hollywood Blockbuster and he would fit right in.
• George Sanders is a fellow journalist who buddies up with Johnny to get the bad guys.  Sanders often played villains (a prime example is coming up in this post!) and here he gets a rare turn as The Nicest Guy on the Planet.  It's his second of two Hitchcock turns.
• Robert Benchley steps away from the Algonquin Table long enough to appear as a journalist and drop a slew of one liners that leave the audience in stitches. 
• Edmund Gwenn is here to represent Team Hitchcock Frequent Flyer!!!  We last saw him in The Trouble With Harry and we'll be seeing him again.  Outside of Hitchcock you know him as Santa in The Miracle on 34th Street.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Yes please!

Rate the Hitchcock cameo!  Love it!  He and Johnny are walking down the street in opposite directions.  Just as they pass each other, Johnny hears the name of the man that he's been trying to find for an interview and does a double take.

Rebecca (1940)

General plot summary and trivia

We all know what this one is about!  We're in Monte Carlo and our Unnamed Narrator is dying of boredom as the paid companion of an obnoxious rich woman.  They run into the mysterious and very good looking Maxim de Winter, and Obnoxious Rich Woman tells her that Maxim is a recent widower and was madly in love with his late wife, Rebecca, who was everything and a bag of chips.  

Well, Maxim is plenty moody, but he seems to like hanging out with our narrator, and she learns by trial and error what phrases not to bring up in conversation that remind him of Rebecca.  Things come to a head when her employer decides to leave Monte so Maxim up and proposes so that they can stay together.  Woo hoo, got the guy and he comes with a huge English seaside estate, Manderley.  And now our unnamed narrator has a name: Mrs. de Winter.

The honeymoon ends when the newlyweds go home to Manderley, where Rebecca's mark is everywhere.  Her possessions, her dog, her servants, and a whole host of people who live to compare the current Mrs. de Winter to the previous Mrs. de Winter.  Our narrator knows that she cannot measure up to this great beauty who was the love of her husband's life, and Maxim becomes increasingly moody.  Our narrator navigates How Not to Talk About Rebecca when everything is about Rebecca, especially with the creepy housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers.

Then a Thing Happens and Rebecca takes center stage again.

Let's take a look!

Rebecca was Hitchcock's first American movie, but the only giveaway about its country of origin is the huge budget.  We're working with a British novel and a cast of British actors and giving the audience the best that both countries have to offer in a movie.  If you've read the book, you will be very comfortable with the movie since both are near identical.  The faithfulness to the book is not a Hitchcock thing, it's a David O. Selznick thing.  Who?  Selznick was a Big Deal Producer who was wrapping up a little movie you may have heard of called Gone With the Wind, and had a knack for doing things like bringing Big Fish in a Little Pond directors like Hitchcock over to Hollywood.

BTW, if you're thinking where have I heard the name [Something] O. [Something] before, you're thinking of Roger O. Thornhill in North by Northwest!  20 years later was not too late for Hitchcock to take a jab at his old boss.

To do the book vs movie smackdown, we're going full spoiler.  I'll put up the 🚨🚨🚨 and I'll put in plenty of non-spoiler padding to hide the juicy details.  If you have either read the book or seen the movie, you're fine to read the spoiler section.  If you haven't then for the love of all that is holy please read the book or see the movie first so that you get the full thrill of the Twist that is the Greatest Twist of Them All.  You will be much better served by getting it from the source(s) than from getting it from me.

🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨

• The narrator is not named in either the book or the movie, but the book teases us a bit.  For example, in an early meeting with Maxim, he tells her that she has a lovely name.  The movie doesn't rub it in.
• The book goes into more details about the de Winters' post Manderley life.  They are living the digital nomad life, minus the digital.  They only stay in out of the way hotels so that they won't meet up with any of Max's society friends.
• In the book, the scene where Mrs. Danvers tries to get the narrator to commit suicide happens the day after the ball.  While they're at it, Mrs. Danvers reveals some more anecdotes about young Rebecca and tells the narrator that she hates her and that she goaded her into wearing the costume as revenge against her and Maxim.  In the movie, this scene happens during the ball while the narrator is still wearing her "Rebecca" costume.  
• The book gives us two big hints about the twist that the movie leaves out.
• Early on the narrator has a conversation with Frank about the boating accident, and she asks a lot more questions than she does in the movie.  She doesn't realize the significance, but it tips the reader off that there might be something more to the accident than we've been told.
• The morning after the ball but before the Mrs. Danvers showdown, the narrator can't find Max so she calls Frank to ask where he is.  On the phone she breaks down and tells Frank that she knows Max is still in love with Rebecca and that their marriage is a failure.  Frank says that she's got it wrong and that there is something that he needs to tell her but he can't say what it is over the phone.  Then the Mrs. Danvers thing happens and the Rebecca thing happens, so by the time that the narrator and Frank meet up she knows the score.  This is passage is a huge heads up to the reader that a big reveal is coming.
• Now let's talk about the Big Twist!
• The big Gone Girl Can Suck It secret is that Rebecca was not a nice person and that Max had hated her from the start of the marriage.  The marriage was a sham and Rebecca was sleeping with everyone except for Max.
• Rebecca started having lady problems and went to see a doctor in London.  The diagnosis was cancer, and the doctor told her that she only had a few months to live.
• Instead of suffering through an inevitable and painful death, Rebecca commits suicide by proxy.  She has Max come down to her cottage and she tells him that she is pregnant and that her child will inherit Manderley and keeps after him until he snaps.  This is where the book and the movie take different paths to get to the same end.
• In the book Max shoots Rebecca.  There is no evidence of the shooting left on the body by the time it is found.
• In the movie Max hits Rebecca, which causes her to fall and hit her head, and the fall is what kills her.  Why?  Because this makes her death an accident instead of murder.  Remember that we have a censorship code in place that says that if you commit murder for any reason you have to have consequences.  If Max had shot her we would have had a very different movie.  This does change Max and the narrator's motivation: in the book he makes a choice and she becomes an accessory after the fact.  In the movie they're just nice people who had a bad thing happen to them.
• The doc is depicted as being a little shady in the movie.  In the book he's a doctor like any other doctor, but in the movie Mrs. Danvers calls him "the doctor she used to see before she was married" and Jack shushes her.  In the movie only, Rebecca thought her symptoms were from pregnancy, and the implication is that the doctor is an abortionist.
• In the book the narrator goes along with the group to see the doctor and Frank stays behind at Manderley.  In the movie the narrator stays home and Frank goes along on the doctor meeting party.
• The "I am Mrs. de Winter now" line comes later in the book than the movie.  In the book, it happens after Rebecca's body is found when Mrs. Danvers tries to serve leftovers for lunch.  The narrator hauls her into the office and tells her to make fresh food and reminds her who the boss is.  In the movie it happens after Mrs. Danvers gets weird while showing her Rebecca's room.  The narrator marches into the office, packs up all of Rebecca's things, and calls Mrs. Danvers in to get rid of them, reminding her who to boss is.
• The ending isn't clearly spelled out in the book.  We know that we're in Jane Eyre territory (where the house gets burned down) and we know that "we can never go back there".  Max calls Frank to let him know that they're driving home overnight, and Frank tells him that Mrs. Danvers has disappeared but no one saw her leave.  As the narrator and Max get close to home they see a bright sky with flashes of red.  It's up to the reader to connect the dots.  In the movie, Mrs. Danvers is shown ominously looming over the sleeping narrator with a candle.  Max and Frank come home to Manderley on fire, and the narrator runs up to them and tells them that Mrs. Danvers told her that she was going to burn down the house as revenge.  The movie ends with Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca's room just as the roof overhead caves in from the fire.

Ima throw in some filler lines here just in case anyone who skipped the spoiler happens to let their eyes drift upward.  The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog how much wood would a wookchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood yada yada yada hello world man oh man Rebecca is one hell of a great story.

🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨

What I think of the movie

• Before: Love it
• After: Love, love, love it

I saw the movie before I read the book, and I've revisited both a few times in my life.  It never gets old.

Is there a MacGuffin? No

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  No

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area? No

Does a character have Mommy Issues? No

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  No, though the housekeeper in the awful Under Capricorn has Mrs. Danvers vibes.  Often imitated, never duplicated.

Adhoc tracking point: does the movie have implied gay or lesbian characters?  Aw yiss it does!  Mrs. Danvers is way too into Rebecca, and there is a very famous scene that is open to interpretation but it sure feels like she's coming on to the narrator.  From what we learn of Rebecca, it seems like she wasn't really into guys.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Joan Fontaine is the narrator, and she's terrific.  Just so that you get your trivia straight, she was nominated but did not win the Oscar for this movie.  She won it for Suspicion the next year.
• George Sanders is Jack, and he's wonderfully sleazy in the role.  We last saw him as a nice guy in Foreign Correspondent.
• Nigel Bruce in the house for Hitchcock movie one of two!!!  He's the narrator's brother in law.
• Oooh is that Leo G. Carroll that I see as the guy who has the solution to the mystery????????  Why yes it is, in his first of six Hitchcock movies!!!!  There is some dispute over which actor had the most appearances with Hitchcock, but he is a contender.  He certainly has a lock on the most frequent appearances in Hitchcock's American Era.  It started with Rebecca and ended with North by Northwest.
• The movie is based on a book by Daphne Du Maurier.  Where have we heard that name before?  The Birds was based on her short story.  We'll be hanging out with her again soon.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? It's totally fine, but I personally would not because it's a black and white movie about adults talking non stop.  I think it might be a little boring for the young 'uns.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo!  Love it!  It's very subtle.  Toward the end of the movie a policeman tells Jack that he's parked illegally and Hitchcock walks by in the background at this point.

________________________

Thanks for hanging out with me to talk Hitchcock.  Let me know which of these you have seen, and what you think.

What is in store for us next time?  We're leaving Hollywood and going back to the old country!  See you in England to get a taste of why Hollywood came calling.

Secret Agent (1936)

Sabotage (1936)

Young and Innocent (1937)

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Jamaica Inn (1939)