Rebecca, motion picture about a newly married woman who feels haunted by her husband’s first wife, based on a novel by Daphne du Maurier. Released in 1940, the film won Academy Awards for Best Picture and for its cinematography. This was the first film Alfred Hitchcock directed in the United States. Joan Fontaine plays an innocent young woman who marries a wealthy Englishman, Maxim de Winter (played by Laurence Olivier). The housekeeper at de Winter’s estate, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), is hostile to the new wife, and when the rest of the staff treats her coolly, she begins to feel that the place is haunted. Eventually, she learns all about the first Mrs. de Winter’s character and untimely death.

Director

• Alfred Hitchcock

Cast

• Laurence Olivier (Maxim de Winter)
• Joan Fontaine (Mrs. de Winter)
• George Sanders (Jack Favell)
• Judith Anderson (Mrs. Danvers)
• Nigel Bruce (Major Giles Lacy)
• C. Aubrey Smith (Colonel Julyan)
• Reginald Denny (Frank Crawley)
• Gladys Cooper (Beatrice Lacy)
• Philip Winter (Robert)
• Edward Fielding (Frith)
• Florence Bates (Mrs. Van Hopper)
• Melville Cooper (Coroner)
• Leo G. Carroll (Dr. Baker)
• Forrester Harvey (Chalcroft)
• Lumsden Hare (Tabbs)
• Leonard Carey (Ben)
• Sir Alfred Hitchcock (Man outside phone booth)
• Billy Bevan (Police officer)
• Leyland Hodgson (Chauffeur)

Awards

• Academy Award for Best Picture (1940)
• Academy Award for Best Cinematography—Black and White (1940): George Barnes

Trivia

• Director Hitchcock makes a brief cameo appearance while Jack Favell is making a phone call in the last minutes of the movie.

Quotes

• Mrs. de Winter (to her husband): “I wish there could have been an invention that bottled up a memory, like perfume, and it never faded, never got stale. Then whenever I wanted to, I could uncork the bottle and live the memory all over again.”
• Mrs. Danvers (to Mrs. de Winter): “You thought you could be Mrs. de Winter. Live in her house. Walk in her steps. Take the things that were hers. But she’s too strong for you. You can’t fight her. No one ever got the better of her. Never. Never. She was beaten in the end, but it wasn’t a man. It wasn’t a woman. It was the sea.”