Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

My favorite Alfred Hitchcock film is "Notorious", but it used to be "Rebecca", and the first VHS I ever was given was that film.  I was thrilled.  As a kid I adored Laurence Olivier films on TV, and I loved reading Daphne Du Maurier.  I loved the romance, melodrama and suspense back then, but now, when I watch "Rebecca" I see a very dark film, in which a naive girl with no experience is trapped by superficial charm and glamour to yoke her life to a murderer's.  Because Max is a murderer in the book, and it's implied in the film, despite Rebecca tripping on the rope.  There is tremendous psychological depth to each of the characters.  But in a nutshell, they are all undone by romantic notions.  Mrs. Danvers is foolish about Rebecca, as is the estate manager.  Max is stupid to think he should take what he wants and that he won't destroy it.  George Sanders as the cousin is really the only person who sees clearly the complications of the situation and understands exactly what Rebecca was.  Because he's like her:  he takes what he wants with his eyes wide open. 

Though Olivier is great, it's Joan Fontaine's film, and she should have won the Oscar for this and not "Suspicion".  Her reactions are transparent and subtly layered.  She's like Euyridice, pulled into hell by Orpheus.  The great symbol is the one tree her father painted over and over again before he died.  He wanted the security and comfort of the familiar and the heroine is his daughter in spirit.  She's too fluttery and frightened to fight for herself, she's instead constantly giving herself away because she supposed it's the right thing to do.  There is a reason she has no name.  She is not a person.  She wants to please in the most self destructive way.  She's not "good", she's terrified to be unmoored to her old life and her father, and she finds a father who has less innocent obsessions.  Unconsciously, he has desired the opposite of Rebecca, but that means he wants a child, not a woman, and that need is base and selfish.  In the book they are huddled away in obscurity and never have children.  Thank god for that.  This story is a horror tale.