Something Out of Nothing

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21819, 23 November 1940, Page 10

Something Out of Nothing

DIRECTOR CREATES MIRACLE Readers by the thousands buy or borrow books, guided largely by the author’s name on the title page. You can hear ’fem at it: “Oh! ‘The Curse of Eve,’ by Ethel Chloride; didn’t you just love that last book of hers, ‘She Did It’ ”? Whereto the other replies, “Yes, but I like Violet Rae’s better.” But one seldom hears of any film addict who selects films because of their directors. And the director of a film is very often more important to its success than is the author to a book, says a writer in the “Melbourne Argus.”

Very few people seem to attach any importance to what are known as “the credits” that precede each film on the screen. Most, indeed, regard the list of frock designers, interior decorators, art directors, and film editors as a nuisance if they notice them at all. These are all usually lumped together on one list. But the name of the director in chief is alway writ large and in lonely splendour. Despite his importance in the film world, I think it would be safe to lay 100 to 1 that not six people in a full house would remember the director’s name after leaving the theatre. Ask the average film addict to name on director, and I doubt if you will receive an answer. Yet the success of a good film is more often due to the director than to the stars to whom the audience attributes I it. Those who have seen “Rebecca” and I who, as is very likely, have enjoyed it, I have seen a film which is a triumph I

for Alfred Hitchcock, who directed it. I He took Daphne Du Maurier’s story I and not only translated it into | dramatic action, but he invested it with the soul of the unseen Rebecca. I have seldom seen a story that makes such tremendous demands on the direction. By scores of deft, subtle touches Alfred Hitchcock creates trifles that become of tense significance when correlated with the whole. A glimpse of an empty room, a hand hesitant on i a door knob, a broken ornament, a scrawled signature, all become things | of force ■when woven into the completed fabric. I have not read the book on which the film is founded, so that I do not know to what extent the film adheres to it. But the film bears one strange feature that the name of the leading woman done by Joan Fontaine is not once mentioned. She passes through it from fade-in to fade-out—nameless. In simple outline the story is that Max de Winter, a young widower, is supposed to be tormented over the loss of his Wife Rebecca, who was drowned in a yachting accident. He meets a simple and very attractive middle-class girl and marries her. He brings his bride back to the stately ancestral home in Cornwall. She is overpowered by the luxury and formality of her new environment. From the moment of her arrival the bride realises that the spirit of the dead Rebecca permeates her new home —more than that, her shadow falls between herself and Max in every action of their lives, and that is where Alfred Hitchcock comes in. With ruthless artistry he re-creates the unseen presence. Deftly he builds up her influence so that the film fairly reeks of Rebecca. Until towards the close of the film the audience is kept in suspense as to the real character of the dead woman. But by his powers of suggestion and by a masterly use of the cameras Alfred Hitchccck invests her with a force that dominates the film and the audience. The essence of Rebecca is all powerful. Some of the methods and devices he uses are almost brutal. In one sequence the bride goes to her room to try to escape from the pervading influence. She stands before her mirror trying to draw her thoughts away, and then the entire force of the waves lashing the cliffs below the house | crashes into her mind—the waves that destroyed Rebecca. Again, in a majestic corridor, a spaniel is seen lying outside a closed door. The audience sees it through the bride’s eyes. She approaches it tifnidly, and the dog slinks away. There is not a word or a | sound, but the implication of Rebecca’s empty room, with the animal waiting | for her, and resenting the intruder’s presence, is raw in its striking force. Everywhere the bride turns she finds the cyphered “R” leering at her. It is on her table napkin at the dinner

table. She throws herself on a bed in her misery to find that her face has been pressing that one damned and übiquitous letter embroidered on the pillow. By some touch of magic Alfred Hitchcock contrives to saturate the inanimate objects about the home, and the home itself, with Rebecca’s unrelenting malignity. By the time he has finished his job there is no need of Crowley’s halting and reluctant description of her to the bride, or for Max’s fuller account of her. By the influence of suggestion alone the audience is brought by Alfred Hitchcock to recognise in Rebecca something that was as vile and evil as it was humanly magnificent. Without catching one glimpse of Rebecca the audience goes aw r ay w r ith a detailed photograph of her etched on its mind. She was physically gorgeous. She was driven by a 5,000-siren power character, and she left a trail of wrecked men in her wake. She was

I cold-blooded (that may account for her I black nighties), a lover of beauty and j luxury, and she was both calculating and amoral. In a word, Rebecca was “hot stuff.” But the amazing part of it is that it is Alfred Hitchcock who creates her that way. He had as a vivid contrast to work with Joan Fontaine as the bride who is the exact antithesis of Rebecca. We can understand why Max j married her to get the taste of Rebecca | out of his system. The bride, too, | shows up by contrast with the witchlike character of the sadist housekeeper who was a legacy from Rebecca. Alfred Hitchcock’s hand can be seen, too, in the devilish scene in which the housekeeper tries to tempt the bride to her death—a beastly but powerful scene. The effect of the direction is that the audience feels like passing a vote of thanks to Max for his method of dealing with Rebecca. But, if directors amount to anything in the public mind —which they don’t—the film should put Alfred Hitchcock's work among the best box-office draws.