REBECCA NEW FILM Lily James in romantic turn (this time with Armie Hammer...)

Daphne du Maurier published Rebecca, her enduring psychological thriller, in 1938 and within two years it had been turned into an Oscar-winning film by Alfred Hitchcock.

Now it’s been given a major featurefilm update with horror specialist Ben Wheatley brought in to direct, and Armie Hammer and Lily James (right) taking on the roles of Max de Winter and his second wife.

The handsome de Winter is an unhappy widower when he meets a pretty but unworldly ladies’ companion (James) in Monte Carlo. They hit it off, he proposes and soon they’re off to Manderley, his sprawling country seat run by the terrifying housekeeper Mrs Danvers (a superb Kristin Scott Thomas), who was unhealthily devoted to first wife Rebecca and is cruel and contemptuous to her successor.

As a facelift for a literary classic, it all works very well. From Wednesday