A TOUCH OF CLASS (REBECCA - 2020)

 

In cinema no text is sacred.

That is why there have been four versions of 'A Star Is Born'.

It is why 'Scarface,' 'True Grit,' 'Cape Fear' and 'The Great Gatsby' have all been remade.

It is why films like 'The Wages of Fear' have become 'Sorcerer,' 'The Seven Samurai' turned into 'The Magnificent Seven' and Christopher Nolan remade the Swedish thriller 'Insomnia'.

However it takes either a lot of courage or misplaced self-confidence to remake an Alfred Hitchcock classic.

Ralph Thomas and Don Sharp's 1959 and 1978 versions of 'The 39 Steps' suffered when compared to the original.

Anthony Page took a hammering for his inferior 1979 remake of 'The Lady Vanishes' with Elliott Gould and Cybill Shepherd.

Even an accomplished a director as Gus Van Sandt found out to his detriment that revisiting Hitchcock can backfire, especially when it was a shot by shot remake of 'Psycho'.

Enter Ben Wheatley, one of Britain's best directors of the past decade, with a daring Netflix adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's 'Rebecca'.

Great remakes justify their existence by bringing something new to the text.

Often it is the stylish flourish of the director and a link to previous works.

Scorsese's 'Cape Fear' riffs on Christian notions of redemption and guilt that previously surfaced in 'Mean Streets'.

However adapting Hitchcock is a perilous enterprise as Wheatley has also discovered.

Some critics have inevitably put the boot into the Essex man's latest, comparing it unfavourably to Hitchcock's Oscar winning 1940 original.

"Slick and overdressed," "a pale imitation," "haunting and clumsy," are just some of the responses, while one evrnveny claimed Wheatley had "flattened a classic".

The director hasn't taken the brickbats lying down, biting back that the views of critics are irrelevant.

The 48 year old has also insisted in interviews that it wasn't the spectre of Hitchcock's Best Picture winner that loomed over his production.

It was the pressure to do justice to du Maurier's 1938 book.

Admitting he had watched the 1940 movie with Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine prior to going into production, he explained: "I've watched everything, obviously, but it's more due diligence to make sure we don't end up putting stuff in the film that was from the film adaptation and not from the book.

"There are crossover bits which were changed. When you're working with the same material, you end up with beats that are similar but there's a lot of made up stuff in the Hitchcock version that we just wanted to avoid having in our film." 

Wheatley's 'Rebecca' begins, like Hitchcock's and du Maurier's novel, on the French Riviera with the classic opening line: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again".

Lily James is the unnamed protagonist who at the start of the film is tending to the needs of Ann Dowd's bitchy, snobby, wealthy American Mrs Van Hopper.

Treated with contempt by her boss, she is sent to book breakfast near the table of Armie Hammer's eligible widower Maxim de Winter and catches his eye.

She falls under his spell when Mrs Van Hopper becomes ill and gets to spend the day with him in Monte Carlo.

When Mrs Van Hopper announces on her recovery that she is bored with Europe and intends on going back to New York, Maxim stuns her by announcing he will marry her assistant and they will honeymoon before returning to his stately home, Manderley in Cornwall.

James' Second Mrs de Winter returns with her new husband to the estate where they are greeted by the staff including their head, Kristin Scott Thomas' Mrs Danvers.

However the spectre of Rebecca, de Winters' first wife looms large over proceedings with her husband loathe to discuss the circumstances of her mysterious death.

It also becomes clear Danvers resents the Second Mrs de Winter and is engaging in a psychological battle to undermine her and the marriage.

Screenwriters Jane Goldman, Joe Shrapnel and Anne Waterhouse and revel in the air of mystery that surrounds Rebecca's death.

But, under Wheatley's guidance, they also foreground the sense of class snobbery.

Not only does Mrs Van Hopper treat the Second Mrs de Winter like an inferior but Danvers appears disdainful of her new mistress, even as she dithers over choosing a sauce to accompany the day's main meal.

An unlikely cameo by a ranting Jason Williamson, frontman of the politically charged electro punk band Sleaford Mods, during a ball in Manderley only adds to the 'Upstairs Downstairs' element.

Wheatley and his writers seem less fixateded than Hitchcock on the power dynamics between Maxim and his new wife.

But there is no denying they have delivered a distinctive, mostly faithful and lush adaptation of du Maurier's novel.

Regular collaborator, the cinematographer Laurie Rose delivers beautifully lit sequences, against the stunning coasts of Monaco and Cornish coasts and in the halls of Manderley.

Julian Day's costumes, Nick Gottschalk's art direction, Katie Spencer's set decoration and Sarah Greenwood's production design all meet the gold standard.

But the film also benefits from some solid casting.

James is well suited to the role of the wide eyed and increasingly disturbed Second Mrs de Winter.

Hammer conjures up a more contained Maxim, while Scott Thomas is excellent as Mrs Danvers, imbuing her with a self-serving outrage that points to a relationship with Rebecca that was more than just that of a mistress and servant.

Sam Riley turns up to deliver a suitably oily turn as the cad Jack Favell.

Keeley Hawes is excellent as Beatrice and Tom Goodman-Hill also impresses as Frank Crawley.

Mark Lewis Jones, Jane Laportaire, Jeff Rawle, Ben Crompton and Bill Paterson also pop up in minor roles while Ann Dowd has fun as the two faced Mrs Van Hopper.

Wheatley is no fool.

He knows the most ardent fans of the Hitchcock original will rail against the need for a remake.

However he makes a pretty compelling case for revisiting du Maurier's novel and those who haven't seen the 1940 movie will find plenty in this version to enjoy.

Some fans may take issue with how he has ended the film.

However, on closer examination, this ending is more open ended than it seems.

And there is no doubt Wheatley's keen eye for class politics gives this version of 'Rebecca' a distinctive taste.

Wheatley has announced his next project will be a sequel to 'The Meg'

Handling Jason Statham and a Jurassic shark?

Now that seems an even tougher challenge than 'Rebecca'.

('Rebecca' was released in UK cinemas on October 16, 2020 and was made available for streaming on Netflix on October 21, 2020)