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Sight and Sound (2000) - Rebecca

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Macnab reviews Rebecca directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

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Rebecca Alfred Hitchcock; USA 1940; PT; £9.99; B/W; Certificate PG

Digitally remastered re-release of Hitchcock's first American film. Whether thanks to David Selznick or Daphne du Maurier, there's an emotional depth here which was missing in his British pictures. Over determined, weirdly fetishistic, full of baroque flourishes, and with Mrs Danvers looking scarily gimlet-eyed, this is no ordinary melodrama. Hitchcock himself dismissed it as novelettish, but from its extraordinary opening (with Joan Fontaine intoning "last night I dreamed of Manderley") to its fiery finale, the film remains mesmerising throughout. (MFB No. 79)