REBECCA
You may think you know what to expect from REBECCA. The director of the latest adaptation aims to prove you wrong
Ben Wheatley takes us on the road to Manderley. Not to be confused with the Robbie Williams track, ‘The Road To Mandalay’. Tune!
TAKE EMPIRE’S WORD for it for now, but this exclusive image is Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s classic novel Rebecca in microcosm. A spooky mansion — Manderley — in the dead of night, supplying those Gothic vibes. Armie Hammer’s Maxim de Winter, master of the house, detached and aloof. His new wife — the second Mrs de Winter, played by Lily James — reaching out to him, seemingly perpetually, in an attempt to build some sort of bridge. In the shadows, lurking, plotting, scheming, Kristin Scott Thomas’ seemingly
Machiavellian housekeeper, Mrs Danvers. And all around them, in every nook and every cranny, in every ornament and ornate decoration of Manderley, the presence of the first Mrs de Winter, the titular Rebecca, can be felt.
“I particularly love that shot,” Wheatley tells Empire. “It’s got the supernatural vibe of it, and the scale, and the classic feel. And those relationships are the heart of the film.”
It’s notable that Wheatley uses the word ‘vibe’, because despite all the trimmings of a Gothic horror (dead wives and dark houses), and despite its influence on a genre (without the du Maurier novel, there is no Crimson Peak, for example), Rebecca is a rare beast. There is nothing supernatural about it. This is a ghost story without a ghost. “That’s what’s so smart about it,” says Wheatley. “Du Maurier was almost trolling people who like romance novels. It’s about a woman who meets a guy on holiday, like a Mills & Boon thing, and then it’s horrible. It’s completely not what you expect.”
Instead, get ready for a collision of genres, as you might expect from the director of Free Fire, High-rise and Sightseers. Wheatley’s eighth feature goes from the sun-kissed romance of Maxim and the soon-to-be Mrs de Winter (we never learn the first name of James’ character, as per the book) into dark, brooding psychological-thriller territory as the second Mrs de Winter finds that Maxim becomes sullen and uncommunicative upon returning to Manderley. And if that weren’t enough, Mrs Danvers seems determined to throw a spanner into the works of this new relationship.
For Wheatley, that all stems from his experience when the project came his way. “I thought I knew it, and I didn’t,” he says. “And it just totally shocked me. I fell for all the twists. When I mentioned it to my family, they said, ‘We love that book’, but when I quizzed them on what happens, they didn’t quite remember. And when I looked at it more forensically, the idea of du Maurier smuggling a ghost story and a thriller and a betrayal inside a romance story, like a Russian doll, was really good. That genre-jumping thing is something I’ve had in my own work, and the connection made sense.”
Rebecca has been filmed frequently, of course: it’s been adapted for television at least four times, and inspired a couple of Bollywood films, a radio play by Orson Welles, and most famously and melodramatically, an acclaimed Best Picture-winning film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940, with Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, and Judith Anderson as Mrs Danvers. But Wheatley and his writing team of Jane Goldman, Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse are aware that people have preconceptions, and will be doing their level best to pull priceless rugs from under your feet. “The connection with the truth is very slippery all the way through,” he teases. “We’ve got all sorts going on. We’re going to take you to all these different places and different emotions, and put you through the wringer. It feels like how cinema used to be, before it got a bit smirky.” The road to Manderley begins here.
REBECCA IS COMING SOON TO NETFLIX