Rebecca (1940): Hitchcock’s Thriller, Deconstructing Two Marriages, Female Subjectivity, Female Sexuality, Lesbianism (Latent, Manifest)
Narrative Structure:
Three Parts
Part1: Monte Carlo
Part 2: Manderley
Hitchcock Motifs:
Tyranny of the past
House Vs. Home
Ocean/Water
Fire
Genres:
Gothic romance
Film Noir
Suspense/Thriller
Domestic Melodrama
British Input:
Source material: Daphne du Maurier
Setting: British Estate, Manderlay
British Cast
British Ambience
British Types:
Dandy aesthete, effete, (played by George Sanders)
Female Subjectivity
Intertextuality
Rebecca and Citizen Kane
Rebecca and Vertigo
Evil:
Represented by women: Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper; Rebecca, a bi-sexual woman who refuses to be domesticated into the position of a wife, trapped in a bourgeois marriage.
Issues:
Abortion
Deviations from norms
Rebecca, a sexually seductive femme, bi-sexual, has an affair with her cousin
