Rebecca

Last night I dreamt about Manderley.

Rebecca from 1940 is my favourite Hitchcock movie and in my view also a very good adaption from the book by Daphne du Maurier. A young and rather insecure woman (Joan Fontaine) meets and falls in love with the glamorous widower Max de Winter (Laurence Olivier. Despite knowing that he mourns the loss of his prefect wife Rebecca, who has drowned a year previously, she marries him and comes with to his manor house Manderley. There she is confronted with the very scary housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) who was fanatically devoted to Rebecca. The heroine feels if anything even more insecure and increasingly uncomfortable at Manderley and when Rebecca’s body is recovered from the sea, everything comes crashing down.

This is not a grand costume movie, but just because the heroine is so very ordinary, her clothes are quite interesting anyway. And of course, the movie is well worth watching for the suspenseful plot and the excellent actors. Joan Fontaine is perfect as the ugly duckling and Laurence Olivier is dreamy. Judith Anderson is perfectly horrible and then there’s my favourite Golden era bad boy George Sanders as Rebecca’s nasty cousin.


The first meeting and a rather horrible evening gown.



Still unmarried- the hat isn't really becoming, I think.



Later in the mvie she wears a much nicer one.



I love the details on the dress.



Various simple outfits.











Trying to step into Rebeccas elegant footssteps. The gown looks nicer on the stills than in the movie, as Joan Fontaine really manages to not wear it well when she acts in it.





Scary Mrs. Danvers.



Country gentry.



Bad boy Sanders in a very loud overcoat, which suits his role very well.



The ill-fated masquerade gown.



I love the hairstyles here.