by CATHY WHITLOCK
The following is an excerpt from Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction, Cathy Whitlock ©2010 HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted with permission.
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” —MRS. DE WINTER from the film, Rebecca, 1940
Rebecca (Selznick International/United Artists, 1940) is the classic Hitchcock thriller centered on a young woman’s (Joan Fontaine) marriage to a rich widower, Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier). Upon arriving at a mansion called Manderly, the sweeping family estate where the couple will make their home, the young wife finds herself living with the omnipresent ghost of Rebecca, her husband’s late first wife. Foreboding and gloomy, the mansion plays an important role in the film – becoming a third major character in the bizarre, ghostly love triangle. Everywhere the new Mrs. de Winter turns, there are constant reminders of Rebecca in the mansion’s vast Gothic rooms. Endless staircases, a dismal fog that pervades the property, and the sinister maid Mrs. Danvers (who is always dressed in black and tends to glide across the sets, Dracula-style) all contribute to the film’s shadowed world.
