Garbage. There....I said it

such a mature and fine response you got there!

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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.

I don't really do reviews on here. I visit the message boards. I watch a lot of film and after almost every one of them, I visit the message boards to see what I missed or to see what others thought. I usually learn something.
I also write praise when I have enjoyment after a viewing.

As I said, I wanted to like this as I do with everything I watch. But it was drivel.
I'm not especially after a 'response'. Just some feedback. My title , however provocative it sounds, is a fun poke at the fact that few posters think this is a poor movie. I was hoping for some points 'for' Rebecca which may have made me see something I had missed.

Remember that these message boards are not fan boards, but boards for discussing the film in question.

If I had liked it, I would have posted a favourable post and all would be quiet around here.

I didn't like it, so my post is apparently 'not even conversation'

Are you telling me that everybody who ever watches Rebecca should like it? We all have different tastes. It's a shame that I can't comment on films I didn't enjoy and only films that I do.

I like some of Hitchcocks films. I love Psycho and Vertigo. They are both superb.

Instead of trying to belittle me with your fanboy/girl comments, perhaps you could have pointed out some redeeming features I may have missed whilst watching.

If you had half a brain you'd see he/she was being more than civil and looking for reasons this film was associated with other classics. Instead of proving your lack of reading comprehension how about you go ahead and point out some of the finer aspects?

Excellent post, Marhefka . I can flick through it again and try and take some of these points on board. I do always take into account the age of anything I watch as so many things have changed, not just socially and morally but also things such as the pace of storylines or individual scenes.


As for the previous poster.......I don't have to write a 'proper review' or account for any opinion I may have.
It seems that it is perfectly OK for somebody to write posts like "I love this. It was awesome" but when anything we write is negative, there is always some self righteous know it all who says we have to justify our thoughts.
I watch lots of films and I want to like all of them. If I do, I often comment. If I don't, I often comment. If I don't understand anything, I often comment.

This is NOT a fan board. This is a forum which is open. We all like different things. I also don't like cucumber. Does that make me an idiot?

lol....good post with a splash of humour. I like it.

I am not going to look at your ratings or any lists of yours or anything like that because I realise that people are.....wait for it....different.

To cite some of my faves as being of the lowest common denominator is a little unfair. Cinema has always been there to entertain us and if I get entertained then I vote or rate accordingly.

You can slag off anything that I like and compare anything to something else but it doesn't matter. We have different tastes. So what?

Personally, I find Godfather, North by Northwest, et al boring and I don't get anything out of them. Should I like them because the majority do?

Some people give Shawshank or Fight Club or Pulp Fiction a 1 out of 10. I don't care what others think.

I also don't like motor racing or boxing but many love them.

And if you are seriously saying that Rebecca can blow away today's new film viewers and their 'right now' appetites, you are possibly deluded.

I love watching films of any type and have rated over 3,000 on here. I can't like them all....can I?

I enjoyed your reply. But please don't call the above mentioned films mindless tedious crap. There seems to be a snobbery about comedy. For example, Oscars get won by actors in 'serious' roles such as biopics or period dramas. Yet somebody like Brendan Fraser in Bedazzled would not get a mention despite doing nothing wrong in that role and playing different characters superbly. But....you know....it's a comedy so it has no merit apparently. Not many actors could have delivered like Will Ferrel in Anchorman or Carrey on Dumb and Dumber. Different skills altogether from your Brandos or your Pacinos, but skills nonetheless.

You call me an idiot because I don't like the same films that you do. Really??

Right....I'm off to have a strawberry milkshake and a banana sandwich. Maybe not to your taste...I must be an idiot.

Now....that's a good post. There....I said it.

First,

Nice observations. The first time I saw this film, I thought he was initially interested in her for two reasons. One was that she was beautiful but shy, which he may have been intrigued by. Which as your initial take on her character indicates, was probably not enough in itself for someone who not only was wordly and wealthy, but had a reputation of being with if you will a more glamourous type, the kind who not only was the center of attention but somehow demanded it. I also thought their initial encounter may have been felt by him to have somehow bound them, at least a bit, together - they shared the knowledge that he may have been saved by her, and at least was brought back to the living from whatever morose contemplation he was experiencing as he peered over the cliff. But again that is not enough it would seem for him to have pursued someone who, at least when seen through the sort of Greek chorus eyes of Mrs. van Hopper, was very much not what she thought to be his type.

As the film progresses, but still short of the specific moment when Maxim told her that he hated Rebecca, we are given conflicting opinions. Of course there are in addition to Mrs. van Hopper the obvious position of Mrs. Danvers in the if you will pro-Rebeecca camp. But there are other and subtly opposing views to those. The conflicting views tend to draw us in, wondering which take is the more accurate. For example while Giles Lacy maintains that the second Mrs. de Winter is exactly the sort he expected, we know this is not true, and Beatrice Lacy confirms she is not what either expected. At first we hear her say some negative comments about the second Mrs. de Winter's clothes and hairstyles. These seem to conform with the views of the pro-Rebecca camp. But... at the end of their first meeting, Beatrice remarks how much improved Maxim seems since he was around his second wife. While such praise is not effusive, of course, it nonetheless is certainly a statement of general approval, and reflects an understanding at least on Beatrice's part that she understands, and we are beginning to understand, why Maxim is attracted to his new wife.

An even more complicated take, however, preceded the lunch with the Lacys. And that of course is the second Mrs. de Winter's first encounter with Frank Crawley. The more times I see this film the more and better I think I undertand the significance of his part in this story. At first I found this scene somewhat jarring. It is the complicated and mixed set of signals Frank sends out that made it so. But we also must recognize it is the first time someone outside the couple gives some real indication (as opposed to Mrs. van Hopper's obnoxious remarks as she wonders out loud about why he would want to marry her) of what the basis for Maxim's attraction to her is. He lays out his compliments, but also refers to Rebecca's great beauty and how impressive she was. I frankly thought, the first time I saw this film and for a few more times after that, that overall Frank's comments were rather inappropriate, and in their own way even obnoxious.

But now I think it best to understand Frank as something of a stand in for a delayed recognition of exactly why Maxim would want his second wife. It is delayed because it is undertaken by someone outside the relationship, looking at it with historical knowledge. But also I think Frank reflects the assumptions and standards of beauty that prevailed at the time, among the upper classes, including the relatively more well placed servants of the upper classes that people who manage the estates, meaning Frank, would share. As I have mentioned elsewhere Joan Fontaine's look in this film represetnted a break with the less natural and more glamourous, but expensive to maintain, look that dominated standards of beauty before.

Frank's take on the situation therefore shows a transition of public perceptions. He follows Maxim in that regard. But he does come to see in effect that Maxim is correct in arriving at a more modern conception of female attraction.

While I think this film has much more to say on the subject of standards of beauty and attraction, and of more interest is the relation of such standards to more general standards, mores and expectations regarding the place of women in society, making Rebecca a sort of pre-feminist work in that regard, there is something else about the role of Frank Crawley in this film. I think this first scene he appears in contains the first indication that not all was happy in regard to the first de Winter marriage. Again, on first viewing it is perhaps not so apparent, but when one reflects on the compliments Frank gives the second Mrs. de Winter, they have to be understood as referring to virtues that Rebecca herself did not have. This in turn must mean that Frank was aware not only of how suhc shortcomings reflected on Rebecca, and made her something less than the paragon people such as Mrs. van Hopper, and of course certainly Mrs. Danvers, saw her as. It also meant that Frank, as we later come to have confirmed, was at least somewhat aware of Maxim's unhappiness with Rebecca. Even one might conclude this early on a significant unhappiness.

but the main point I want to make about all this is that I think Rebecca reflects a dynamic I know I have experienced in my own life, and I think is one that is also experienced by many, even most, people. And that is that prior disappointments in relationships can make one value the differing qualities of a new lover more than would have been the case without those prior experiences, and disappointments. In effect the portrayal of Maxim's character includes a dynamic of that sort, where we come to learn how very right he was, despite the confusion and doubts we begin with, to see not only how right he was to pursue his second wife, but how that process allows him, and us, to grow beyond that first relationship (of course it can be more than one prior relationship, but i digress).

That is one of the things about this film that makes it so great.