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Rating: Many immense literary and cinematic works feature a protagonist lacking a precise identity due to an uncertain social standing, an annihilating family context, or a childhood spent in a perpetual defensive attitude towards life in all its manifestations. In most of these masterpieces, our heroes always manage to emerge until they define themselves in all their hidden greatness. It’s called a "happy ending," nothing new. Because nothing is more dispiriting than anonymity, or at least that’s what we’ve been told since elementary school, where mediocre, written in red pen on the notebook, represented a notorious insult. But are we sure about that?
The second Mrs. De Winter. The new wife of the widower De Winter doesn’t even have a name. She is a companion lady, living to fulfill the needs of others. She has been given the clean and pretty face of Joan Fontaine, not the sultry beauty of Vivien Leigh, or the bold features of Loretta Young, or the charming melancholy of Margaret Sullavan, all of whom were candidates for the aforementioned role. To balance the character’s "normalcy," there is only a small handful of good feelings that, however, will allow her to save an aristocratic billionaire’s life, make him fall in love, and marry her. In a short time, she becomes the new lady of a manor without lifting a finger. A real injustice. And indeed, the punishment quickly manifests itself in the spectral pallor of the housekeeper Danvers and in the ambiguous attitudes of her husband Maxim, both worshipers of the late Rebecca. The reason for its centrality is emphasized by the title, highlighted by the continual references to its painful absence, and yet it is not found in either of these two aspects. Is it perhaps a coincidence that the moment when the Rebecca mystery is revealed is one of the most satisfying and cathartic of the whole film? Nothing happens by chance with Hitchcock.
It’s the same moment when Maxim explains the reasons for the apparent uxoricidal act. The unsuspecting viewer (or dazzled by the smoothness of the dialogues) begins to sympathize with the man, forgiving him some dark behaviors, or at least deemed so: it turns out that Rebecca is just a dream, it’s the idea of the beautiful, rich, and intelligent wife. In reality, she is wicked and evil, and the widower’s confession seems to overshadow the accusation of sexual perversion, which is then confirmed. Rebecca is beautiful and damned. She married a lord to elevate herself socially and achieved far greater results than expected: she became a celebrity. Everyone who knew her describes her as an angelic, charismatic being, for the accountant of the De Winter house she is even "the most beautiful creature I have ever seen". Maxim and Rebecca are nothing more than the classic golden-age Hollywood couple. They represent the excellent product of the human race, the specimens to which the rest of the herd is associated.
From this point of view, the figure of Danvers is fundamental. Her dark wandering through the castle's rooms and the harsh behavior reserved for the new lady suggest that she is hiding something related to Rebecca’s death, especially for those who approach a Hitchcock film in the firm belief that they are watching "just a thriller." Miss Danvers actually has little to do with Rebecca’s end, moreover, she would not have harmed a hair on her head because she is her number one fan. No one can take her place, no one can reach her levels of splendor, no one can set foot in her rooms, guarded like a reliquary. Danvers is not simply the usual maid viscerally attached to her mistress to the point of denying human dignity to anyone else, even to herself. The housekeeper is the prototype of the adherent to new image myths, of life becoming a fairy tale, of suntanned smiles and outward balances. Nothing is more contemporary.
Yet we are in 1940, Hitchcock shoots his first American film (and it was already an Oscar winner, precisely: best film, best black-and-white cinematography). The British director has just landed in Hollywood, but it doesn’t take long for his genius to grasp the facets of American stardom and the way it was perceived by the popular masses. The screenplay, based on the homonymous novel by Daphne Du Maurier, manages to temper the melodrama tones with the intrigue of the noir and the suspense of the mystery. The conclusion, however, is all pink: Maxim manages to exonerate himself from the murder accusation thanks to an unexpected twist. A clever choice, as the clumsy confession of the man, all tears and guilt, softens the audience. The widower rehabilitates himself, the insipid wife escapes the fire set by a now-crazy Danvers, and Rebecca’s memory sinks in a sea of mud. Those who are not innocent die or exit the scene, and the mediocre audience is guaranteed their mocking triumph: "Happy Ending".
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