THE CINEMA
4. Rebecca." At the Gaumont — Behind the Guns." Generally released.
IT would be a pity if Hitchcock's translation to Hollywood were to be overshadowed by a star. Let it be first said, therefore, that Joan Fontaine's performance in Rebecca has a charm with which only early Garbo and early Bergner can be compared. She has a special beauty and a catch in the voice. She is, in fact, one of those rare creatures, a genuine personality of the monochrome screen. As Maxim de Winter's unhappy second wife she is almost more of a ghost than the boding presence of the dead Rebecca ; but she is ghost in the sense of a Walter de la Mare ghost, for it is her human attributes which are the most important. Has Hitchcock created this lovely creature? One may haznrd half a guess that he has ; for there is no doubt, from other evidence in this film, that the change of air has increased his stature as a film maker.
The story of Rebecca, for all its melodrama, contains the seeds of a deeper style of production than that which contented Hitchcock in his long and successful career as Britain's ace director. It has the basic elements of the well-known Hitch- cockian thriller ; but added to these are certain psychological profundities which call for more than perfunctory treatment. Those who recall The Lodger (with Ivor Novello) will remember those touches, such as the scenes on the staircase' which gave to the film a hint of something beyond the mere shocker. Here that something flowers. The scenes in the great house of Manderley, with its vast halls, its endless stone corridors, its living rooms with their huge fires and widely-spaced furniture, combine in their meticulous realism with the murky imaginings aroused by the sinister housekeeper, the widowed bedroom with its curtained windows, and the deserted but all-understanding spaniel. Over and over again the film builds up to a point of mental suspense which the clicking of a latch, or the falling of a shadow, translates into a physical shock.
With sets even more elaborate than those with which he revolutionised British studio schedules, with a meticulously exact use of camera movement and of subdued lighting, the director builds Manderley for us as a great mansion in which we our- selves move with its alarming and not altogether convincing inhabitants. This alone is the achievement of a man with "all the dialect and different sldll." Add to this that the personal stories, for all their intrinsic nonsensicality, are presented in an equally convincing way (" catching all passion in the craft of will") and it may be conceded that Rebecca is a film well worth careful study by students of the cinema.
Note, for instance, the insolent brilliance of the opening sequence. The voice of the heroine whom we have not yet seen, describes for us at a date long after the ending of the whole film, a dream about her approach to ruined Manderley, while the camera moves steadily through the overgrown drives, the misty trees, and the uncut shrubs to the skeleton of the huge house. What an incredible prelude to the Oppenheim reel about Monte Carlo which follows! How well it sets the basic mood of the later reels. Note, too, the care with which a truly English atmosphere is preserved throughout the film. Not a chair is wrongly set, not an accent jars on the Cornish air. In all these respects Hitchcock deserves unstinted praise.
But it must be confessed that the film is too long ; the story overbalances itself. As long as we are in Manderley, with Laurence Olivier as de Winter, Joan Fontaine as his wife, and Judith Anderson as the housekeeper, our attention is fully held. But the excursions into outside worlds overburden the film. Despite the accuracy of their delineation, the scenes of the ship- wreck, the inquest, and the doctor's consulting-room in Shepherd's Bush (what a grand set!), overburden with pitiless detail a simple—perhaps too simple—story. Hitchcock's adora- tion of detail is here revealed as a real defect. But in general Rebecca may be regarded as one of his best and most engrossing films.
Behind the Guns is a frankly impressionistic two-reeler which aims at revealing to us the enormous scope of our arms drive. In this it is fully successful. Its scenes of munition factories, of aircraft works, and of shipyard3 are photographed with a mastery of camerawork seldom brought to industrial subjects. The film is cut to a steady and impressive rhythm to which Norman . Shelley's North Country commentary adds a noble overtone, and which is at times slightly obscured by the over- orchestration of Francis Chagrin's otherwise excellent musical score. The general effect of this film should be admirable for public morale ; and it also has the privilege of being a Ministry of Information production which has reached the public screens
only a short time after its completion. BASIL WRIGHT.
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