Rebecca

This film was brought to my attention years ago when I was doing A-level literature and studying ' The Bloody Chamber' because of its weird similarity to Rebeca.

This is a Hitchcock movie, one of his first and one that stars Lawrence Olivier. Made or released in 1940, black and white, which is Hitchcock's preferred way of filming and personally, I think that black and white complements the music that always emphasises the suspense of a Hitchcock film. Black and white is the way that he should have gone with for all his films. It helps to make things more scary and harder to predict.

Olivier is much  better than James Stewart because he can actually act and isn't just himself in every film that he has ever been in. Unfortunately for Hitchcock all of his real stars become bigger or make decisions that impact their career and life. Olivier went on to make many other movies and didn't want to keep selling Hitchcock movies, Grace Kelly got married, became Princess of Monaco and wasn't permitted to continue with her acting career and Julie Andrews really made her name from singing and after damaging her voice made the odd appearance and turned to writing children's books and doing voice acting for the Despicable me series of films.

There is more to this film than the similarities towards this famous mistreatment of women. This film is an adaptation of a novel and the novel sold very well. I haven't read the novel but I do know that this film is a strong film. With Olivier holding the lead and giving off probably the most convincing performance in a Hitchock movie (although Carry Grant is close) any woman taking on a new role and trying to make a name for themselves can relax and just play their part because they know that next to one of the all time greats they can play off him.

Tragedy strikes at the end but there is a sense that none of the characters were really wrong or bad. We all think that because this plot is similar to the marquis de sade that Max De Winter (Olivier) is going to miss treat his wife but he's not what we are expecting and that makes for a nice surprise. The ending is always exciting and as someone who owns at least ten Hitchcock films I am very excited to watch the rest of them.