[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 20 May, 2024 - r/HobbyDrama (2024)

I reread Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, by which I mean I was watching the Granada Sherlock Holmes and it started w WHOLE THING.

So basically, Granada Sherlock Holmes stars Jeremy Brett, and while watching the show on Youtube I got a sidebar suggestion to watch episode 1 of Rebecca, a 1979 TV adaptation which I presume made it to my suggestions because it also stars Jeremy Brett. So I watched it and had... thoughts. Which led me to reread the book. Which led me to rewatch the Hitchco*ck movie. It was a busy couple of days.

The 1979 adaptation stars Jeremy Brett as Maxim de Winter, Joanna David* as the narrator, and Anna Massey as Mrs Danvers (incidentally, Massey was Brett's ex-wife and you'd think that would be more than enough to give Manderley bad juju lol). Learning of its existence was a shocker as I'd thought that the book had been definitively, if somewhat transformationally, adaptated by Hitchco*ck (starring Laurence Olivier as Maxim, Joan Fontaine as the narrator, and Judith Anderson as Mrs Danvers). Turns out, both Daphne du Maurier and Laurence Olivier apparently preferred the miniseries- or more specifically Brett as Maxim- which was an interesting thing to learn! Watching the show made me want to reread the book, and rereading the book made me want to rewatch the movie, and it was SO SO interesting.

The thing with the show is that theoretically, it's more book-accurate. The narrator is a bit sassier, Maxim is warmer and less remote, his sister and BIL are nice and supportive... and all that is true, but watching the show made me realize that that just didn't really work transferred from the book to the screen, because in the book we see everything through the narrator's eyes! Not all that much actually happens- a nice chunk of the dialogue is literally only imagined in her mind and while there IS something sinister going on behind the scenes, the narrator catastrophizes and misinterprets what she sees and that forms a major part of the book's suspense. So even though the show does get that the book is more of a domestic thriller than suspense (if that makes sense), it's at the expense of a lot of tension. Sure, Mrs Danvers is a malevolent force, but everyone else in the book (even Maxim, self-absorbed as he is) likes the narrator and tries to help her settle in, and without all the internal narrative, the shifts between that and the conflict, as well as the narrator's reactions to things, can be kind of baffling.

The movie, on the other hand, was really smart in that it made Manderley ITSELF a sinister force that affected the narrator's life within it. Everything is weird and sinister in the house, and the house affects everyone in it, including making Maxim worse. As a result, the narrator's voice isn't as needed, because we can feel the sinister atmosphere and tinge on events being off-putting enough without it. Maxim's sister and brother in law are also much less kind and welcoming, giving her more reason to be disturbed by everything. While the show does ultimately convey that Maxim's love of Manderley and insistence on returning is what led to much of his misfortune, it's not nearly as explicit and it's not an instrument in the narrator's ordeal.

I think casting is an element as well. As mentioned, the show characters are played in a much more naturalistic style than the movie ones, in addition to the book's characterizations being more specifically represented. Anna Massey as Mrs Danvers is much more natural and in some scenes certainly less sinister-seeming than Judith Anderson, but she also feels like a real woman who is grappling with brutal emotions and taking them out on someone else, and I really enjoyed that. Jeremy Brett is great as Maxim, and gives the performance a bit more transparency- you can see his interest in the narrator, there's a tinge of obvious disappointment and vulnerability when he thinks the narrator has rejected his proposal... things that Olivier didn't really center in his portrayal, which seemed like it was meant to purposely make Maxim an enigma. Joanna David is good, though I don't think AS good as Massey or Brett, and I definitely enjoy her more spirited version of the narrator, who Maxim seems to actually enjoy talking to; sometimes in the movie it feels like Olivier likes the narrator because she looks like Joan Fontaine.

And speaking of Joan Fontaine... that really gets to where I think the show really wilts and the movie proves better, which is the ending, and I think it comes down to whether you're casting for people who will pull off the beginning or people who will pull off the ending. Jeremy Brett and Joanna David are great in a more relationship-focused first half, in which we get a clear dynamic of Maxim lying to the narrator because he's afraid of losing her, but they both kind of fade into the background in the more dramatic second half. I found Olivier and Fontaine kind of disappointing at the beginning- Olivier's performance is so controlled, Fontaine isn't super convincing at playing meek and mild- but by the end, Olivier's presence holds you even when his own role is diminished and Fontaine is magisterial. In the show, the peak versions of the characters are the ones in the first few scenes, and David just doesn't have the presence to make herself felt in a final act where she's mostly an observer.

There are a bunch of other really interesting differences (the revelation about Rebecca's fate and how that affects, the narrator, for example) but at a certain point I'm just rambling- I do recommend the show despite some flaws, if only because it got me back reading a book that I really love!

*Re Joanna David, funny trivia is that her daughter, Emilia Fox, went on to play the narrator opposite Charles Dance as Maxim in a 1990s adaptation which I hear somewhat meh things about. If these names sound familiar, it's because mother and daughter were both in another much more famous 90s adaptation of a classic- Pride and Prejudice, in which David played Mrs Gardiner and Fox played Georgiana Darcy.