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Thursday, November 12, 2015

Rebecca (1940)

this movie probably played better at the time that it was made than it does now.  A young woman with no prospects who is working as a companion for an elderly wealthy woman meets an older widower who is staying at the same resort and they fall in love.  She has true affection for the man, and when he asks her to marry him, she enthusiastically agrees.  they have a picture perfect honeymoon and then they return to his ancestral home, where his wife was killed in a drowning accident and the house staff can't seem to say enough wonderful things about her and how much they miss her.  The young girl is social inexperienced and her new husband does nothing to help her adjust.
As a result, things quickly go from bad to worse.  The head house keeper tries to get Rebecca to kill herself, then tries to make her paranoid, and finally the husband confesses all to Rebecca.  That he is not destitute about his wife's death, and together they manage to muddle through the ordeal, but really, he should have just gotten rid of all the staff, sold off the house and moved on.  Much better life, even if the movie would have been dull as dish water, and Hitchcock would never have made it.  This is a good early film of his.

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