Rebecca

Rating:
Summary: Certainly awesome
Review: I watched this movie only after I read the book by Daphe Du Maurier several times at different ages. I am glad to say that it was very close to what I had imagined while I read the book. I certainly feel 3 hours are required for doing justice to the book. Though, it would have been much better had they spent more time showing how Maxim de Winter and the narrator fall in love in Monte Carlo. I feel that was too hurried and several details were left out. The last part where Max de Winter tries to save Danvers from the burning Manderley ought to have been avoided as it wasn't part of the story and only added melodrama.

The cast for this second version with Charles Dance, Emilia Fox and Diana Rigg couldn't have been better. The perfect English looking Charles Dance is the only one who could portray the reserved, austre and noble Max de Winter. I feel the difference in age between Max De Winter and the narrator was very accurately portrayed in the film. An older, more mature looking man was very vital for this role. Though the book says that Maxim was about twice the age of the young narrator, around 40, I always imagined Maxim to look older than that with all the fear and suffering he had undergone. Olivier certainly was not cut for this role in Hitchcock's version. I think Emilia Fox was also great with her lost, shy look.

I feel this version is probably the closest it can get to the book and the characters. The cast chosen was the best by far.

Rating:
Summary: Bland retelling of the 1940's film
Review: I'm almost embarrassed, considering all the highly positive reviews already posted here, to have disliked this version of Rebecca. I found it too mild in comparison to the film original, which admittedly was played as far too much gothic melodrama, so much so that it was laughable in places. Still, Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers was menacing. Here, Diana Rigg is just bitchy, stuffy and even rather distracted, like she's bored with the whole thing. This is revealing of the entire mood of this film, as if all the actors grow bored with the story. The initial scenes, where the unnamed heroine is supposed to be quietly infatuated and then in love with her hero, Maxim, are breezed over rather like they were an inconvenience. Faye Dunaway gets too much screen time in a minor role (Mrs. Van Hopper) that she performs with unnerving overacting. It seems like she thought that since it was such a minor role, she'd go wild in order to steal the whole film and catch the eye of Hollywood to revitalize her fading career. My opinion is that she merely delivered something she'd never done before, a clumsy and poor performance. Add to that, this portion of the story was at the mercy of the screenwriter, bearing little resemblance to the book. Nor is it particularly romantic. Charles Dance is miscast as Maxim De Winter, plodding through all his scenes as a rather dull, uninteresting individual rather than a man hurt and haunted by his past. His portrayal does not arouse the sympathies. He hints at no traumas but rather as having found the drama in his life as an inconvenience rather than a betrayal, a murder, and a cover-up. Olivier in the 1940's film has this role down far better. Too, Dance comes off as being far too old and stodgy for the role. Maxim was supposed to be in his forties. Dance has the looks of a man in his fifties and the bearing and maturity of a man hovering around sixty. This makes his love affair with a woman in her early twenties rather repulsive. It doesn't help that Emilia Fox, the heroine, looks so young and tender as if she were still in her mid-teens. We have a Lolita rather than a Rebecca. Early on, Dance as DeWinter states that he's twice the girl's age. I burst out laughing. Three times, I said aloud to the television. This was miscasting that is far too distracting. Whatever romantic scenes there are between these two look perverse. Add to that, nearly all other characters (many that were in the book were left out) are also of advancing years in order to keep up with Dance's age. When among them, Fox looks like an adolescent staying up past her bedtime. It is very difficult, then, to believe in the romantic aspects of the story. Other aspects were also a problem. Alfred Hitchcock, in the original film, had only about 2 hours to tell the whole story. He left out some very important elements, although Joan Fontaine as the heroine did her best to convey them -- the deep insecurity of the heroine about her attractiveness, her attire, her position in society, her position as spouse to a man who was married before and therefore is very comfortable as a husband while she is quite inexperienced as his wife. And her rich fantasy life. Add to that her uncertainty about dealing with a man who is not only haunted or has a bad temper, but who is occasionally verbally abusive and emotionally ungenerous. Even though there are 3 1/2 hours to this film, we don't get these interactions in this version. Instead, Fox's heroine vacillates between whining, demanding to be respected even though she's making no effort to mature or educate herself, and then running off from adversity like a child to shut herself into her room. The storyline just doesn't convey the character; and the characterization has no tension, no passions. Fox is bland, given to cute smiles now and then. She seems nearly oblivious. She doesn't appear to be able to fit into the drama that is unfolding around her, but then the drama isn't particularly noticeable. A mystery, an obsessed housekeeper, a distant husband and a beautiful dead wife. Fox's Mrs. De Winter, a focal point for it all, avoids drama by seeming dumbfounded, confused, and only slightly curious. Manderley, the commanding house, looks imposing and splendid in an external establishing shot, but the interiors are cramped and rather stagey and ordinary. This is too bad, since Manderley is so important to the plot, being not just the stage setting but nearly a character, since it motivated Maxim to murder. Jonathan Cake is an intrusion rather than a catalyst, playing the slimey Jack Favell, Rebecca's cousin and one of her lovers. Too, Cake does not do an original characterization; instead, he appears to be playing George Saunders playing Jack Favell -- he even has George Saunders' growling droll down perfectly. Looks like he studied the original film many times in order to give this copy-cat performance. A stronger, more resourceful performance from Rigg as Mrs. Danvers might have saved this production. However, someone told her to be cold and proper, unlike the Danvers in the book who was spiteful behind the housekeeper demeanor. I had heard that a previous TV version with Anna Massey was quite good. It is not currently available, so as far as this version goes, I'd advise you to skip it and read the book. The book is far more meaningful and entertaining. And Rebecca is now out in a revitalized version on DVD, for those who want melodrama and content to their films.

Rating:
Summary: I wish...
Review: if only holleywood would undertake a newer modern version of this film. I've read the novel, and I like that this movie shows us a bit about rebecca. When reading the book I pictured Hugh Jackman as a wonderful Maximilian and Julie Benz as the ghostlike Rebecca with flashbacks to this mystery woman. I know it sounds strange, but I really feel they should remake this film. Maybe get Tim Burton to do it or something? :)
It was overall dissapointing. I hope they shall redo this someday. My friends agree with me on the casting though if it should ever be made.

Rating:
Summary: Watch it again and again
Review: It may follow the storyline, more then the 1940's version, but does no justice to the characters, at all.
Maxim DeWinter looks like he has one foot in his grave. With the heroine, looking like a teenager, any romantic scenes between them looked disgusting. He looked old enough to be her grandfather. The heroine had too much spunck for the role, as well. She either acted spoiled and cold, or just mimiced Joan Fontaine facial expressions.
Mrs. Danvers wasn't scary, either... And when looking at Mrs. Van Hopper for the first time, I forgot it took place in the late 1920's.
The whole thing just went on like some long soap opera...
This movie isn't worth buying, It would be better to just borrow it from the library, or rent it.

Rating:
Summary: Truly great
Review: It's 1927, and we are in Monte Carlo, a most romantic place... The heroine of the novel, a very young girl (she is also the storyteller) is employed as a companion to a vulgar, rich woman, Mrs. Van Hopper. There she meets Maxim de Winter, a sophisticated, attractive older man, very rich, the owner of a splendid, ancient estate called Manderley. They marry very soon and return to England. Perfect happiness eludes her - she becomes obsessed with Rebecca, Maxim's first wife, who mysteriously drowned in the bay ten months before Monte Carlo. Rebecca's ghost seems to be everywhere - the housekeeper, the creepy, murderous Mrs. Danvers is still obsessively devoted to her and keeps her rooms just as they were before her death. The second Mrs. de Winter knows that everyone compares her to Rebecca, and is convinced she must be a disappointment - "You'll never get the better of her", Mrs. Danvers says. Frank Crawley, the estate manager, tells her Rebecca was "the most beautiful creature I ever saw", but adds that, to a husband, "kindness, sincerity and modesty are worth all the beauty and wit in the world". That sounds very odd: if Rebecca was so perfect, surely she must have been kind and sincere? Rebecca's death and past life seem to be shrouded in mystery, until one day, after a strong storm, the boat in which she drowned is found by the shore. A painful scene follows: the second Mrs. de Winter learns the awful truth. Have she and Maxim already lost their chance of happiness?

I must say that, when I read the novel by Daphne du Maurier on which this film was based, I was just 12 and somehow lacking in understanding. I wondered for days why the writer NEVER mentions the heroine's christian name... Still the pictures of Maxim and the heroine were very clear in my mind. Emilia Fox and Charles Dance ARE them, just as Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine in the 1940 Hitchcock (in my opinion) fall short of a perfect fit. Emilia Fox's Mrs. de Winter, for example, is by no means a weak young woman, helplessly awaiting disaster: when she discovers she is truly needed she finds a strength she didn't know she possessed. Charles Dance's Maxim is the supreme embodiment of high-society sophistication and handsomeness, which, combined with his haunted past, tenderness and brooding intensity is surely enough to make him irresistible! Also, Jonathan Cake is truly loathsome as Jack Favell, Rebecca's lecherous and dishonest more-than-cousin. Diana Rigg plays a Mrs. Danvers who, although more mellow and vulnerable than the character in the novel and previous film version, is nonetheless superlative.

After I rented this Masterpiece Theatre version three times, I was so hooked I bought in the end, and I must say I had no cause to regret it, on the contrary!

Rating:
Summary: So It's not Exact...
Review: Masterpiece Theatre does it again and transforms literature into moving pictures. This time they take on the task of Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca." With a high caliber cast featuring such greats as Diana Rigg, Charles Dance, Faye Dunaway, and Ian McDiarmid, this adaptation takes a few liberties from the book, delivering a different perspective but still maintaining the naivete of the very young new Mrs. DeWinter(Emilia Fox). There may be some slow scenes, fortunately the cast makes them bearable.

Rating:
Summary: Strayed a bit from the book, but very well done
Review: On the whole, I thought this was pretty good. The acting was terrific--Charles Dance was the perfect Maxim de Winter, and I thought Emilia Fox excellently captured the innocence of Mrs. de Winter (her name was not Caroline, by the way--that was the woman in the portrait, and Mrs. de Winter dressed up as her for the ball. Her character was never named, in the book or this version--but then you would know that if you'd read the book!) I didn't like the way the ending was changed, but this version did seem a bit more faithful to du Maurier's classic than the Olivier/Fontaine version, which I've always had some problems with. Overall--definitely worth watching!

Rating:
Summary: The way that books converted to movies should be.
Review: The movie Rebecca by the Mobil Masterpice Theater is by far the most accurate telling of the book. The detail to how the unknown chacter acts is as if she were the wrighter of the novel and she her self were Mrs. de Winter. I find this version of the movie the best yet!

Rating:
Summary: The way that books converted to movies should be.
Review: The movie Rebecca by the Mobil Masterpice Theater is by far the most accurate telling of the book. The detail to how the unknown chacter acts is as if she were the wrighter of the novel and she her self were Mrs. de Winter. I find this version of the movie the best yet!

Rating:
Summary: Loved it!
Review: This is one of the best movies I have seen. I haven't seen the other two versions but I think this one would outclass those. Charles Dance is babelicious and Diana Rigg is, as always, brilliant. Emilia Fox is a little wooden but an excellent actress. Her mum, Joanna David, can be proud of her daughter following in her footsteps in the same role, of Rebecca.