Adaptation
At Selznick's insistence, the film adapts the plot of du Maurier's novel Rebecca faithfully. However, one plot detail was altered to comply with the Hollywood Production Code, which said that the murder of a spouse had to be punished. In the novel, Maxim shoots Rebecca, while in the film, he only thinks of killing her after she taunts him, whereupon she suddenly falls back, hits her head on a heavy piece of ship's tackle, and dies from her head injuries, so that her death is an accident, not murder. According to the book It's only a Movie, Selznick wanted the smoke from the burning Manderley to spell out a huge "R". Hitchcock thought the touch lacked subtlety. While Selznick was preoccupied by Gone with the Wind (1939), Hitchcock was able to replace the smoky "R" with the burning of a monogrammed négligée case lying atop a bed pillow. Hitchcock also edited the picture in camera – shooting only what he wanted to see in the final film – a method of filmmaking that did not allow Selznick to reedit the picture. Although Selznick insisted the film be faithful to the novel, Hitchcock made some changes, especially with the character of Mrs. Danvers, though not as many as he had made in a previous rejected screenplay, in which he altered virtually the entire story. In the novel, Mrs. Danvers is something of a jealous mother figure. Her past is mentioned in the book. But in the film, Mrs. Danvers is a much younger character (the actress, Judith Anderson, would have been about 42 at the time of shooting) and her past is not revealed at all. The only thing we know about her is that she came to Manderley when Rebecca was a bride. Hitchcock made her more of a ghostly figure, with possible lesbian undertones (as discussed in the documentary The Celluloid Closet (1995)).
The theatrical release of Rebecca was delayed in order to give it a shot at the 1940 Academy Awards, because it was thought the 1939 Awards would be dominated by Gone with the Wind, another Selznick production.
Read more about this topic: Rebecca (1940 film)
Famous quotes containing the word adaptation:
“The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
“In youth the human body drew me and was the object of my secret and natural dreams. But body after body has taken away from me that sensual phosphorescence which my youth delighted in. Within me is no disturbing interplay now, but only the steady currents of adaptation and of sympathy.”
—Haniel Long (1888–1956)
“Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring, through obeying the blind urge.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)