Rebecca

I've read the book at least six times and always reread it with great pleasure. It is so well written, really. This TV movie was an excellent adaptation, the best compared to a more recent one with Charles Dance as Max De Winter (Charles Dance.... give me a break! This guy has the charisma of an oyster shell!) and even compared to Hitchcock's movie with Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine.

Anna Massey is a terrifying Mrs Danvers, skinny and cold with perfect tight lips. Joanna David plays the ingénue with much wit and charm. Jeremy Brett is the perfect British gentleman, charismatic and mysterious, hiding a terrible secret. As for Rebecca, the first dead wife, she is a real character in this version, the central character even despite the fact that we never see her on screen. Only hear about her but in such a way that it

I've been looking to buy this version in VHS (or DVD now) but BBC has not yet released it. It's a real shame.

The BBC are still refusing to release this superior production of 'Rebecca' officially, but I have finally been able to view a copy, many years after first hearing about it.

So, does it match up to all the discussion and speculation? Close to the book, and well-cast (Jeremy Brett as Maxim, Joanna David - whose daughter Emilia Fox appeared in another Rebecca twenty years later - as the second Mrs De Winter, Anna Massey - the former Mrs Brett - as Mrs Danvers, and Julian Holloway as Jack Favell), it certainly does not disappoint. In four episodes it involves the viewer while making a good stab at translating a complicated book to the screen.

Not broodingly Gothic like Hitchcock's version with Olivier, or convoluted like the Emilia Fox/Charles Dance version, the 1970s Rebecca stands up well against a selection of other period dramas made at the same time by the BBC. Certainly it seems unfair that it is suppressed from view in the UK - the US has had TV repeats, although no video or DVD.

I wish this show was available on video. It perfectly catches the spirit--and leisurely pace--of the novel, which might not to be to the taste of the MTV-cut-watching public, but I think it still has great acting and excellent direction to recommend it.

All the principals are excellent. They have to be, since nothing happens for so long the interaction between the characters is the main 'action' in the film, and it's all rather compactly staged despite some spectacular locations. The production does not date--thankfully, no one tried to 'update' the women's fashions and the music, a major pitfall in shows from this time, is all based on Debussy.

Anna Massey is a terrifying and sadistic Mrs. Danvers, Joanna David is perfectly cast as the clueless heroine (she's pitiful without seeming stupid, no mean feat), and Jeremy Brett is brilliant in showing the past hurts of an essentially selfish and cruel hero, entirely with his facial expressions.

I saw the very last part of this 4-part miniseries 12 years ago on PBS. It was so fascinating I rushed out and bought the book. (And read it until the covers fell off, and because of it years later won a "Who was Rebecca?" essay contest and a trip to England.) For the next two years I besieged PBS with requests to re-run it, in 1996 they finally did. I savored each moment of it, and taped it of course. I still have the tapes, but wish it was on DVD.

Jeremy Brett -- later to become forever identified as Sherlock Holmes -- was the perfect Maxim de Winter. After hearing his story of Rebecca, you could finally understand why he married the Second Mrs. de Winter, shy, tongue-tied, and klutzy. She possessed the innocence he desperately needed. Anna Massey was a very creepy, scary Mrs. Danvers. In real-life, Jeremy Brett and Anna Massey were briefly married in their youth. It throws a new slant on the Danvers-de Winter relationship, doesn't it? And Joanna David goes from a girl afraid of her shadow to a woman who can take whatever is dished out to her by the end of the series. Excellent performances.

I've seen the Hitchcock version -- Maxim was too much a caricature of rude aristocracy, and because of the Hayes Commission certain elements of the story were drastically changed, with ill effect. I've also seen the recent Charles Dance version; interestingly the girl playing the second Mrs. de Winter in that one is the daughter of Joanna David, and she isn't bad, but Dance is nobody's notion of Maxim, and for completely gratuitous reasons they changed the story. Du Maurier's work is perfection itself and nobody should ever change it. The Brett-David-Massey version comes closest to the book, is beautifully photographed and hauntingly scored, with Debussy's "Reverie" and other classical and impressionist music played throughout. This is the one that needs to be on DVD...preferably a "collector's edition," with lots of special features.

This was a four part movie on PBS. I did not care much for fiction at the time, but after the second night, I went out and bought the book so I could find out what the finish was. I watch Rebecca nearly every time it is showing.