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Rebecca The Making of a Hollywood Classic Jennifer Leigh Wells 9781492807841 Books

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Rebecca The Making of a Hollywood Classic Jennifer Leigh Wells 9781492807841 Books

This book is written for those seeking more information on a beloved film but wanting to merely skim the story behind the film. The author is obviously passionate about this classic and that passion shines through; however, while I very much appreciate the fun facts presented and the research done to pull this work together, I felt that it somehow lacked substance. The film is a favorite of mine and the novel on which it is based is a great period piece despite the extreme naïveté of the protagonist, which can be somewhat frustrating to the twenty-first century reader. So if you are looking for some additional tidbits on Rebecca, here is a quick read to fill you in.


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Rebecca The Making of a Hollywood Classic Jennifer Leigh Wells 9781492807841 Books Reviews

The film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca holds a fascinating place in Hollywood movie history. Produced by David O. Selznick in 1939, it was the first film that Alfred Hitchcock directed in America, and would mark the start of his career working within the Hollywood studio system. The collaboration of two headstrong auteurs, Selznick and Hitchcock, led to a battleground during production, with Selznick sending Hitchcock a barrage of memos and infamously complaining of his Jigsaw editing, which ensured that Hitchcock would get his director's cut in the finished film. Hitchcock resented Selznick's interference so only filmed the minimum that he thought was necessary, giving Selznick, who was famous for tinkering in the edit, little choice but to accept Hitchcock's editorial choices.

Jennifer Wells charts the engaging story from genesis, writing, casting and filming of du Maurier's much loved classic.
The prose is crisp and fluid, as we are introduced to all the major players, with special emphasis on the contenders for the pivotal roles of Maxim de Winter and the second Mrs. de Winter, famously played by Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine.

What happened next on the set is the stuff of Hollywood legends, which Wells recounts with lucid and engaging details. Olivier, smarting from the rejection of his then wife Vivien Leigh in the central role, bitterly complained to Hitchcock about Fontaine's casting and urged the portly director to get rid of her. Hitchcock remained steadfast to Fontaine, but not without psychologically manipulating the young actress into believing that the cast and crew disliked her.

The end result is that Fontaine's performance as the nervous young brIde eager to please is perfect, and justifiably won Fontaine an Oscar nomination, which she would win for her next Hitchcock film Suspicion.

Overall Wells gives the reader a compelling insight into the Hollywood studio system at work, and how a phenomenal best seller is translated and manipulated onto the screen during the golden age of movie making. Highly recommended.
As a Cornwall expert I found several mistakes in this book. A photo of Fowey would have been more fitting than a photo of Land's End.
Somerset Magham is spelled with an "a".
All the details about Hitchcock and Selznick are contained in the Rebecca Criterion DVD from 2017, so there was not much I had not read before.
The font changes between large and a bit smaller and then back to large (?).
The book has less 106 pages and a small paperback format would have been better than this large format.
The quality of the photos in the text is often less than satisfying.
I cannot recommend it.
Being a big fan of film noir, Rebecca stands out among those oldie goldie movies that to this day haunts me. My love of the stories of Post World War I England are a sad and lingering salute to an age gone by. This story is about one of the last few villages that looked to their Lord , a throw back, to when the village rejoiced and had formal parties only at the Lord's Manor. The villagers were very proud of their Lord and his Manor, but the Lord and the Manor's inhabitants are as haunted as the Manor and the Lord. A very good read by a fireplace on a rainy or snowy day.
(May Contain Spoilers)

This is an amazingly encompassing book about the classic film "Rebecca". The author really pulled together all of the most interesting information to help us understand how this film came about. I am a huge fan of the movie so I had to read this book.

Wells starts out mentioning a lot of major players in the film. And all the woman behind the men in the film. It was very interesting that even back then, woman were running the show. At least that is how I read it.

The producer of "Rebecca", David O. Selznick, was instrumental in bringing the director, Alfred Hitchcock, to America to work on this film. In fact, Selznick was instrumental in getting a lot of movies produced at that time and pulling a lot of leading ladies from other studios to come work for him. His behind the scenes work and attention to the tiniest of details was amazing to read about. He was also responsible for some of the most iconic pictures of all time including Gone With The Wind, A Star Is Born, and Duel In The Sun.

The thing I found the most interesting is the book, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, has never been out of print since its publication in 1938. That is pretty amazing.

The book explains how hard Selznick was to work with and sites many examples of this. In fact when asked, Hitchcock's daughter remembers that this was her father's favorite film but Hitchcock would say differently. Selznick was known for his obsessive memo writing. The most fascinating fact is from his memos dictated from 1916 when he was 14, to 1965 when he died,
he dictated enough memos to fill 2,000 file boxes.

On the set of "Rebecca", Hitchcock and Selznick butted heads but "Rebecca" was Hitchcock's first American film and the one his daughter loves best. He was very careful to pretend he was listening to Selznick but do things the way he wanted them done. My favorite quote from this book is the following ""Hitchcock, who was annoyed by Selznick's continual interference, tried to cope with the matter by pretending to go along with Selznick's suggestions then doing things his own way". But despite all of the problems that arose, Selznick said he would only work with Hitchcock.

The book then talks about the script and curiously enough Daphne du Maurier turned down the chance to write the screenplay. A man named Michael Hogan who got little credit did most of the work.

Because times were what they were and movies could be not released because of language or sexual situations, Selznick had to change a big part of the book where Rebecca gets murdered because if they followed the book and had the man murder her with no consequences, they would be sure to be a blip on the morality radar and have a chance of not getting the film made. You can read in the book what they came up with instead. Other than that "Rebecca" had nothing outright or landish that would get the movie pulled.

Then the book gets into talking about the whole process of casting the leading lady. A very long and very interesting process that caused a lot of problems.

Then there was the casting of the leading man. And in casting both the leading roles, the director and producer butted heads.

Next, the book goes on to talk in detail about how the supporting cast came together to make the film even better.

I don't want to give all the surprises away but things like the set and how it was made, and where the movie was shot is discussed in the book.

Also discussed is the tempo of the movie regarding a quick or slow moving film and who wanted what.

As far as our leading lady, Hitchcock did many things to make Joan Fontaine feel insecure. He turned most of the cast against her and left her feeling cold and insecure, fatigued and weak. It is believed he did this to get her to act up to his standards.

Hitchcock was also described by many of the woman as being very vulgar. They did not want to be around him.

As far as cinematography, cinematographer George Barnes came from 20th Century Fox and he was "a master at lighting and noted for his soft-edged deep focused photography." He was nominated for eight Oscars.

Composer Franz Waxman was nominated for an Oscar.

The book also explains all of the other awards that Rebecca either won or was nominated for.

And the book ends with information on the radio and television adaptions, remakes, spoofs and bollywood films that were made from "Rebecca". And one very special surprise at the very end of the book.

As someone who loved the movie Rebecca, I really liked this book. It was an easy read and it was so fascinating to find out all of the backstage goings-on. If you look at IMDB, which I always use for my movie information, a lot of their information is incorrect or missing. If you have not seen Rebecca, see it first of all. And then read this book. If you are a lover of the cinema, especially old movies like what they show on Turner Classic Movies, you will probably love this book and recognize a lot of familiar names of the time. So basically see "Rebecca" the film and read Rebecca by Jennifer Leigh Wells.
This book is written for those seeking more information on a beloved film but wanting to merely skim the story behind the film. The author is obviously passionate about this classic and that passion shines through; however, while I very much appreciate the fun facts presented and the research done to pull this work together, I felt that it somehow lacked substance. The film is a favorite of mine and the novel on which it is based is a great period piece despite the extreme naïveté of the protagonist, which can be somewhat frustrating to the twenty-first century reader. So if you are looking for some additional tidbits on Rebecca, here is a quick read to fill you in.