“What people are nostalgic for isn’t necessarily any particular period but the happier values that are missing today.” “You have to go back in time to tell a story that doesn’t have to face ’70s problems,” Rank’s head of production, Tony Williams, told The Guardian in 1978. But Rank took the wrong lessons away from the film, concluding that what contemporary viewers really wanted was to escape to the past. Making his feature debut after years of directing innovative commercials, Parker took a weird idea and applied a glossy, forward-looking style that would prove influential in the years that followed. That changed with the success of Bugsy Malone in 1976, an Alan Parker–directed musical that paid homage to classic Hollywood gangster films with an all-kid cast. The rights to both films belonged to the Rank Organization, a venerable British production company that had scaled back its film ambitions in the early ’70s. But if there are good reasons to remake a Hitchcock film, they can’t be found in a second remake of The 39 Steps, released in 1978, and the remake of Hitchcock’s 1938 thriller The Lady Vanishes that appeared the following year. A largely forgotten, and now hard to track down, remake of 1935’s The 39 Steps followed Hitchcock’s second pass at The Man Who in 1959, but otherwise filmmakers seemed to lose their nerve until the end of the ’70s, shortly after the Master himself had bowed out of filmmaking with Family Plot in 1976. Hitchcock’s 1930s films-tight, clever, fast thrillers made in Britain and filled with dark humor and pre-War dread-have attracted the most Hitchcock remakes. The result, though pretty good, is one of the lesser efforts made during Hitchock’s Hollywood golden age, losing the punchiness of the original for a more leisurely thriller that features Doris Day singing “Que Sera Sera” a few times too many. Sensing room for improvement in his 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much (which he later described as the work of “a talented amateur”), he loosely remade the film in 1956. Even Hitchcock struggled to remake Hitchcock. Maybe that’s why Hitchcock remakes are relatively rare: There’s just no good reason to try to top the work of a filmmaker dubbed the Master of Suspense. There’s no way to watch it without being reminded you could be watching Hitchcock’s version instead. Wheatley’s, by contrast, plays like the work of a director exploring territory already claimed by somebody else’s battle. Selznick, but however unpleasant their clash, a great film emerged from the process. Hitchcock’s first film after leaving England for Hollywood, Rebecca was born of a struggle between the director and powerful producer David O. The opening sets the tone for the movie, which re-creates familiar moments to lesser effect and with a cast that has to work in the shadow of Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, and Judith Anderson, all of whom earned Oscar nominations for their work. Netflix’s ‘Rebecca’ Raises the Question: Why Go Back Again? What’s Your Plan, Armie Hammer? There’s nothing wrong with the scene, but also nothing that makes it feel necessary. Wheatley paces it a little more quickly, however, and employs CGI-assisted visuals in place of Hitchcock’s miniatures. Like Hitchcock’s, his Rebecca opens with the protagonist recounting a dream of returning to Manderley as the camera creeps onto the grounds of the now-overgrown property. Sometimes Wheatley’s version even seems to encourage it. But the first adaptation casts an inescapable shadow over this new version, which unavoidably invites comparison to the original. Rebecca isn’t technically a remake of the Best Picture–winning Hitchcock film the opening credits to the 2020 version describe it as a “picturization of Daphne du Maurier’s celebrated novel.” It’s a new adaptation of the same book. It turns those who’ve seen Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 adaptation of the same book into an audience of Mrs. de Winter, it can’t shake the specter of what came before. The movie’s not bad but, like the Second Mrs. Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas), who reminds the new arrival of all the ways she fails to measure up to her predecessor. The protagonist finds the place filled with reminders of de Winter’s first wife, the Rebecca of the title, and overseen by the unyielding housekeeper Mrs. An adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 bestseller, it’s the story of an unnamed protagonist (Lily James) who marries wealthy widower Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer) and moves to Manderley, de Winter’s sprawling Cornish estate. A ghost haunts Rebecca, the new film by Ben Wheatley premiering on Netflix this week.
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