२५ ऑक्टोबर, २०२०

"In 1938, the dread in taking over a big house like Manderley came from the idea that one could end up an inept matriarch, a woman who could not fulfill her obligations."

"Today, the story could have been fertile terrain on which to explore issues of control, abuse, and the sheer terror of becoming a wife at all. Hitchcock’s version was shaped in other ways by the mores of the time. Because of Hays Code restrictions, the homoeroticism of Mrs. Danvers’s longing for Rebecca could be addressed only through innuendo.... A new film could have explored the violence and sensuality of du Maurier’s tale any way it pleased. And yet Ben Wheatley’s superficial, slapdash new Netflix adaptation... is a film that lies somewhere between a lukewarm retread of Hitchcock’s original and a glossy Instagram feed.... Ultimately, 'Rebecca' suffers from a malady that is plaguing much of streaming entertainment.... 'Here,' [the streaming executives] seem to say. 'Here is some maximalist fare with actors you have heard of—press Play for serotonin.'... They really do think we’ll watch anything. And perhaps, in the end, they are right. We are stuck at home.... I longed for scenes in which [the lead actress] was simply able to roam, silently, feeling creeped out and trapped in her new reality.... but it never gives us a chance to dream of Manderley again."

Writes Rachel Syme in "All the Wrong Reasons to Remake 'Rebecca'" (in The New Yorker). 

The Hitchcock film is fantastic and endlessly rewatchable. If I wanted something else, it would be a much longer miniseries that uses everything in the book. Perhaps this is the idea in the new Netflix show, and Symes might be right that this formula is dull and dead. The fact is, the book is there and will always be there, for new readers, with their new minds, to make their own new version, which is what happens when we read.

५० टिप्पण्या:

Carol म्हणाले...

Ugh, Netflix movies are sooo terrible. Formulaic eye candy with grisly crime for plot interest! Filed on location in the beautiful Rockies/Caribbean/Sonoran desert..bleah....

Ken B म्हणाले...

Another review that isn’t about what it’s supposedly reviewing.

We watch mostly Brit stuff. AcornTV or BritBox. I watch more YouTube stuff now. I watched a course from the technical university in Madras that was good, some chess videos, The local library has a good amount of foreign film, so I am catching up on some stuff I should have seen already.

Michael K म्हणाले...

Hearing it is NetFlix solves my problem. I have a DVD of the original.

tcrosse म्हणाले...

John Waters has observed that they should only remake the bad movies.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

Not counting the occasional documentary, I haven't watched a movie on TV (or anywhere else) since before the pandemic began. I can't ever force myself to be interested in starting one!

James K म्हणाले...

Because we haven't had enough retakes on history and literature that inject homoerotic motives. Yawn.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

Better idea: Read the book.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent म्हणाले...

The review itself is a tired retread. Watch me flog this horse some more.

rcocean म्हणाले...

Hard to beat the 1940 version which won an AA for best film. I was surprised that Robert Sherwood, who was FDR's speechwriter during WW II, adopted the novel and wrote the screenplay.

Joe Smith म्हणाले...

If the actresses are hot, everyone appreciates a gratuitous lipstick lezbo scene.

I've always wanted to live in a house with a name...you know, 'Seven Oaks,' or 'Seascape,' you get the idea.

There is an old neighborhood about a mile down the road from me, and most of the (very pricey) houses have names.

Maybe I'll save my pennies and move there.

MayBee म्हणाले...

we watched this last night!

It felt like Downton Abbey remade Rebecca.

wild chicken म्हणाले...

New Brit stuff is bad too..so PC.

If TCM ever changes mission I'm sunk. At least the old bad movies are campy or kitsch.

They were showing some Women's Movies porn last week. Not a good sign.

MayBee म्हणाले...

Hahahhahhaha "The sheer terror of becoming a wife at all". I just noticed that line. People.

ColoComment म्हणाले...

du Maurier, Helen MacInnes, Alistair MacLean, Frederick Forsythe, Mary Renault -- all great post-WW II popular mystery/espionage/etc. fiction authors whose written works far outclass the movies made of them (except for the Hitchcock movies - he did good work!)

bagoh20 म्हणाले...

I love science fiction and Neflix offers a lot of original movies in that genre, but they are always disappointing. They typically have an alluring cover and trailer, but if you watch them, they all go the same way with a long long build up where nothing happens for an hour or more and then a little pay off at the end. I never watch the whole thing anymore, I skip thought the filler, but that's no way to take in a story, so I have pretty much stopped watching.

bagoh20 म्हणाले...

Our problem might be age. I've noticed that it's harder to get excited about a lot of things anymore, because we've already seen so much. Little is new or surprising. Maybe that's why we don't live forever. Imagine how hard it would be to find novelty after 150 years of life.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne म्हणाले...

This whole issue could be easily solved if loudmouth critics like Rachel Syme would get off their lazy millennial asses and write something new that Netflix could turn into a movie rather that rehashing classic works that have been filmed over and over again. But no, that would take talent, a work-ethic and the guts required to put out a novel that might fail.

Bob Boyd म्हणाले...

So what's her problem? Not enough hot, girl on girl action?

That's a legitimate gripe.

Hey Skipper म्हणाले...

Not counting the occasional documentary, I haven't watched a movie ...

I watched "What Killed Michael Brown" yesterday. Excellent.

Cannot fathom what the hell Amazon was thinking.

Ralph L म्हणाले...

There was a miniseries with Charles Dance that I can't remember much about.

Zach म्हणाले...

I watched the Netflix version last night. Lily James does a good job, but I think it spent too much time overestablishing that Rebecca was super perfect and impossible to live up to and not enough time setting up the plot turn.

Also, for a plot that's inherently melodramatic -- the whole movie is about James's conflicted feelings about her new situation -- the actors aren't really melodramatic actors. Armie Hammer and Lily James are basically emotionally stable actors, good at showing one emotion at a time. For this story, I think you want mood swings.

That said, it's a good looking movie with quality actors telling a story for adults. That's an underserved genre right now. I enjoyed it, and I'd happily rewatch it at some point in the future.

Roughcoat म्हणाले...

Mrs. Roughcoat and I watched the movie a couple of days ago. We were reasonably entertained. But then, we weren't watching it with an eye for its socio-political-psychological messaging. We weren't watching it with the intention of writing an article about critiquing it or bitching about in a blog comments section. We watch movies all the time, on Netflix and wherever else we can find a movie that we think might interest us. We even go to the local drive-in to movies, one of the few remaining drive-in venues on the planet. Sucks to be us, I guess.

Zach म्हणाले...

It's not a bad review, but I think the reviewer's suggestions to show things that the Hays Code would have prohibited are questionable.

The perspective of the story is that James (and the audience, who are seeing the story through James's eyes) doesn't really know what's going on. She's in a world she doesn't really understand, and a lot of her fears are playing out in her head. It's important that the subtext is subtext -- if you turn it into text by, say, showing a lesbian love scene between Rebecca and the housekeeper, then there's no mystery and no tension.

Earnest Prole म्हणाले...

I watched the Netflix version of Rebecca last night with my wife, who’s the model of an intelligent, unmediated viewer: She would never know or care what a New Yorker critic thinks, or know or care she’s supposed to dislike Netflix because of some political calculation. She loved the movie.

Paul Snively म्हणाले...

James K: Because we haven't had enough retakes on history and literature that inject homoerotic motives. Yawn.

To be fair, the point is the homoeroticism is in the Hitchcock rendition, and having read the book and performed in a high-school production of the play, I'll argue it's in the original text as well—one reason for the protagonist's increasing unease being the unspeakable motivation for Mrs. Danvers' thinly-veiled, perplexing hostility.

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

It has been made into a mininseries at least once by PBS. I remember watching it back in the late 90s.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne म्हणाले...

After reading Althouse's 'family love' post it occurs to me that Rachel Syme could write a novel about the son of a high level, powerful political family who's relegated to being the family's sleazy factotum.

He could spend the early part of the novel going about and performing his bagman and 'fixer' type duties and ruminating about how this was all forced on him while his brother is the 'bright boy' in line to take up the reins of power one day. By mid-novel he could begin making an attempt to break away from the family and live a sleaze-free life, but ultimately fail and by the end of the novel realize that he became the family bagman not because it was forced on him, but because he's a natural born sleaze.

This story may have been done before, but if so; it wouldn't be the first time in human history a plot was re-cycled.

Roughcoat म्हणाले...

I've noticed that it's harder to get excited about a lot of things anymore, because we've already seen so much. Little is new or surprising.

I'm with bagoh20 on this, especially with regard to movies and music and, to lesser but still significant extent, politics as well.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne म्हणाले...

Ralph L said...

There was a miniseries with Charles Dance that I can't remember much about.

The BBC did a miniseries back in the 1980's with Jeremy Brett.

h म्हणाले...

What I am turned off by is the total predictability in today's journalism: every review of an artistic endeavor will either be congratulatory for the endeavor's wokeness, or critical for the endeavor's failure to be sufficiently woke. Artistic merit -- beauty, truth, technical competence, even intellectual provocativeness -- are all secondary to the wokeness mandate. (Likewise in the post next to this one, I am turned off by the total predictability of political coverage in today's journalism.)

Greg The Class Traitor म्हणाले...

"They really do think we’ll watch anything. And perhaps, in the end, they are right. "

That's what Major League sports thought. Their viewership numbers are telling a different story

Lewis Wetzel म्हणाले...

. . . and the sheer terror of becoming a wife at all.

What kind of a woman thinks like this? Not that becoming a wife may be terrifying to some women, but why especially to a wife? Marriage is as potentially terrifying to a man as it is potentially terrifying to a woman. It is not just women who fear making a bad match, who look down the hall of years and see as much to fear as to cherish. The idea that in marriage women bear a heavier burden than men is ridiculous.

Joe Smith म्हणाले...

"New Brit stuff is bad too..so PC."

Is Rebecca black?

A lot of the new BBC stuff that takes place in the '40s and '50s have a lot of black actors and interracial marriages.

And gays...lot's of gays.

Very historic don't you know...

William म्हणाले...

After the way Game of Thrones abandoned and betrayed my love, I have found it hard to form a meaningful relationship with a television show. There's just too much wariness on my part after the way they let me down.....I watched the first two episodes of Emily in Paris. It stars that other Lily--Lily Collins. It's some kind of elaborate wet dream, but a woman's wet dream. Lily wears expensive clothes and flirts with attractive men against scenic Paris backdrops. There's a kind of morbid fascination to watching it. Behold Freud, this is what women really want....I don't know if I'll continue watching it. There are some sexy scenes, but she doesn't get naked. I mean the plot begs for nudity and Lily Collins is very hot, but she keeps all those expensive clothes welded to her slender, elegant frame.....I don't think I'm in the target demographic for any of these shows. I watch a lot of The Great Courses. You learn a lot, and they help you nod off.

Michael K म्हणाले...

Blogger ColoComment said...
du Maurier, Helen MacInnes, Alistair MacLean, Frederick Forsythe, Mary Renault -- all great post-WW II popular mystery/espionage/etc. fiction authors whose written works far outclass the movies made of them (except for the Hitchcock movies - he did good work!)


Agree with one slight quibble. Helen MacInnes' novels lost some romance when her husband died. I agree about the movies made from MacInnes and disagree about du Maurier. Have any movies been made of Mary Renault books ?

tcrosse म्हणाले...

FWIW The London papers roundly panned it: “mostly rubbish”, “feminist drivel”.

Lurker21 म्हणाले...


It could actually be better than some British TV remakes.

How did contemporary writers and producers think that their remakes could be better than the last generation's Brideshead Revisited series or A Room with a View movie.

Maybe "Peak TV" has come and gone and all we have left are retreads and reboots, either in name or in essence.

Joe Smith म्हणाले...

"There are some sexy scenes, but she doesn't get naked. I mean the plot begs for nudity and Lily Collins is very hot, but she keeps all those expensive clothes welded to her slender, elegant frame...."

The modern rule is, the more famous the actress, the less of a chance you'll see her tits.

We watch a lot of British stuff, and one of the shows does have a fair amount of sex scenes...nothing gratuitous and in keeping with the story.

But the well-established actresses always have their bras on the entire time.

You know, like in real life : )

Caligula म्हणाले...

"Let's remake Moby Dick."

"Let's remake Hamlet, Prince of Denmark."

"Let's make a new recording of classic rock hits."

Umm, really, no one "remakes" novels or plays? So why remake an old movie- because the technology used to make it is old (black-and-white, bad sound, 4:3 aspect ratio)? Or because the technology in it is old (old cars, ancient landline phones, people travelling in trains or DC3s)? Perhaps the old movie is just embarrassing(not enough minorities cast in major roles, perhaps) Why does no one remake old sound recordings?

Of course, the real question here is, where has Hollywood's creativity gone that they can think of nothing better to do with their substantial resources than remake a fine old movie (when they're not busy producing a sequel of a sequel of a sequel, of course)?

Have they no original stories to tell? Nothing but visual spectacle, and remakes to show?

Lewis Wetzel म्हणाले...

Blogger Joe Smith said...

"New Brit stuff is bad too..so PC."
Is Rebecca black?
A lot of the new BBC stuff that takes place in the '40s and '50s have a lot of black actors and interracial marriages.
And gays...lot's of gays.
Very historic don't you know...
10/25/20, 12:28 PM


I watched this horror flick last night, _Overlord_, set in WW2. It features a group of US airborn troops who parachute into France on D-Day and find a Nazi monster factory.
It was well done, SFX were great, but the airborn soldiers were racially mixed and were led by a black sergeant.
There were no black or integrated paratroop units in Europe during WW2. This isn't a small point, one of the things we are supposed to remember is that segregation kept blacks out of major swathes of American life until the 1960s, at least.
So you have this odd thing going on, where the film maker wanted to use historical WW2 as a backdrop for his horror movie, probably so he could use Nazis for the baddies. But you couldn't have a historically accurate cast, because that would mean no black actors on the US side (of course the Nazis were all played by white actors).
Now you can say that the whole thing is just a bit of fluff and an obvious fantasy, true, but it is weirdly anachronistic, as if the Americans had been wearing Revolutionary War uniforms rather than GI gear.

Big Mike म्हणाले...

I've always wanted to live in a house with a name...you know, 'Seven Oaks,' or 'Seascape,' you get the idea.

Or “Skyfall”?

EAB म्हणाले...

I watched it the other night. Meh. Granted, I have read the book and love the Hitchcock version. There was no romance in this, despite more sexuality. It’s like they wanted to stay in the era, yet modernize it. Kristen Scott Thomas was the best thing in it. She did Danvers well. Armie Hammer lacked passion or any sense of real torment. Ultimately, I found it kind of boring.

gpm म्हणाले...

>>I've always wanted to live in a house with a name

Have never used the name much, but I call my little getaway in New Hampshire "Twelve Artichokes." One of my sisters was, I think, the only one who ever got the joke.

>>If TCM ever changes mission I'm sunk. At least the old bad movies are campy or kitsch.

Ditto. It's practically all I have on most of the day.

>>They were showing some Women's Movies porn last week. Not a good sign.

The "made by women" schtick is something like a three-month project that, I think, continues through the end of next month. If it's a good movie by, say, Dorothy Arzner, I'll watch it. But not just any movie because it was made by a woman. And not the one made by Albania's best-ever woman director about the young-uns reacting to the Commie bureaucrats.

>>Armie Hammer and Lily James are basically emotionally stable actors, good at showing one emotion at a time

Armie Hammer and Lily James are insanely gorgeous human beings. Not sure there's much more than that (or more that is needed?).

>>Have any movies been made of Mary Renault books?

Had the same thought. It's been a while, but I read a lot (most?) of them back in the day, starting with Fire from Heaven when I found it in a guest bedroom back in law school about 1976.

--gpm

Ralph L म्हणाले...

I looked up the Jeremy Brett version on youtube and realized I'd seen it without connecting that Maxim with Sherlock Holmes. Just switched on PBS, and the same actress who was the nameless Mrs. De Winter is a Reverend Mother on Midsomer Murders.

Ralph L म्हणाले...

And one of the non-nuns is named De Winter. (another Midsomer inside joke)

Cato म्हणाले...

"The Hitchcock film is fantastic and endlessly rewatchable." Actually, it is impossible to watch, unless you own it. It is not available on Netflix, Amazon Prime or any other streaming service. If I'm wrong please let me know.

stephen cooper म्हणाले...

some trivia -
the scene in the car where the wind is running through Rebecca's hair could not have been directed by Hitchcock, she looks so lovely and timeless, there is not a decade in the last 50 years where she would have looked out of date or avant-garde (that is a compliment!) and Hitchcock could not have directed that scene. It must have been someone else.

"Rebecca" is not a movie I have ever watched straight through - but the beginning line in the novel is one of the great beginning lines ever, and the actress who played Rebecca was at the peak of her beauty and it was like this ...
(true story, for purposes of comparison, follows. One night I was driving back from Atlantic City (business, not gambling) to the swamp. When I paid the lady at the exit to the parking garage at the Trump casino (this was before Trump ran for Congress, or for any elective office) she said she would like to let me not pay at all because I had such beautiful eyes --after I kidded her a little and asked her if she really wanted my money. OK No big deal this has happened to me all my life, but I was in my 50s by then and it had not happened for awhile. So a couple hours later I get to the toll booth at the end of the Jersey Turnpike and I realize I don't have any bills and so I start counting change (the toll was close to 12 bucks and trust me I did not expect the toll-taker, a blonde-haired middle aged woman to be happy to wait while I counted change) and I said I am so sorry, usually I am better prepared than that and she said "it is ok, you have a kind face and beautiful eyes and you can take as much time as you want" , and so on, and then, an hour later, at the bridge over that big river whose name I always forget but which runs along the Delaware border (I think it is the Delaware River but maybe it is the SUSKWAHANNA), I pull up and the toll taker is a beautiful young woman, looks like Ava Gardner but with less makeup and a healthier complexion (WHICH IS NOT WHAT YOU EXPECT FROM TOLL COLLECTORS). I Kid you not, I started to tell her I would have to give her quarters and she INTERRUPTED ME and said"Did anyone ever tell you you have the most beautiful blue eyes?"

Years later, I had a friend who is a beautiful woman and I told her about these coincidences, I said my theory was that the toll-taker union plays games on us just to amuse themselves, and she said, no, sometimes, if you are good looking, there are days where you are so glowing with your good looks that EVERYBODY NOTICES, and I said but I am not good looking, she said ... hold my beer (no she said something else).
Gail Russell in Angel and the Badman, Shirley McClain in We Three, Marilyn Monroe in Some Like it Hot ---- it did not matter who the cinematographer was, they were just at High Renaissance level, as so many non-famous people have been so so often.


Also, Tolkien was a fan of at least one of Mary Renault's novels, I forget which one.
"Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley" = I have had intense dreams lately after recovering from a very nasty bloody procedure in a very sensitive area of my body, but even if that were not the case I would think that was a great line to start a book.

JAORE म्हणाले...

They need to remake the movie with an all male cast. I'm sure it would do fabulously well..... Unless those sexist womenz attack the concept.

stephen cooper म्हणाले...

The point was, with respect to the movie version of Rebecca, that whatever Hitchcock was good at, profound artistic appreciation for the beauty of women ---- that was not in his wheelhouse.

If even I, no expert on beauty, get that, it is probably true.

Jamie म्हणाले...

It's important that the subtext is subtext -- if you turn it into text by, say, showing a lesbian love scene between Rebecca and the housekeeper, then there's no mystery and no tension.

Exactly. But evidently you can't have subtlety any more, or suggestion, or inner monologue that is not physically spoken like the stupid voiceovers in Dune. And Lord, if there's a hint of homoeroticism in the original, then naturally the author must have really wished she could have spelled it out in all its glistening glory, of course!