Rebecca (1940)
I didn’t recognize Olivier in this film by Hitchcock. I suppose he doesn’t have a very distinctive face. Older, but not unattractive here. Joan Fontaine was very young and pretty and she plays an innocent quite well. Hollywood code required that the film be changed from the du Maurier book in a significant way. I actually like the film the way it is. But the book is much darker and quite different from the film. I wonder that Hitchcock might have been quite disappointed about not being able to take more liberties with the film, but apparently he was somewhat micro-managed by producer David O’Selznick. There is a lesbian story-line which surprisingly survived the censors.
