'It's not a Hitchcock picture,' the master told François Truffaut. He was being a little cagy, but in one sense he was right. Rebecca, now showing in a brand-new, sharp-focus print at the National Film Theatre and the Screen on the Hill, was a David O. Selznick film, 'a picturisation' as the title credits have it, of a very successful novel. 'We bought Rebecca,' Selznick wrote in a memo objecting strenuously to a first draft of the screenplay, 'and we intend to make Rebecca.' That was the royal we, not David and Alfred. The film won an Oscar, for best picture but not best director. The best director award that year - 1940 - went to John Ford for Grapes of Wrath.

LRB 20 July 2006 | PDF Download