Harrison's Reports (1939) - United Artists Forecasts
Details
- article: United Artists Forecasts
- journal: Harrison's Reports (10/Jun/1939)
- issue: volume 21, issue 23, pages 89 & 92
- journal ISSN:
- publisher: Harrison's Reports, Inc.
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Daphne du Maurier, David O. Selznick, Rebecca (1940), Secret Agent (1936), The 39 Steps (1935), The Lady Vanishes (1938)
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UNITED ARTISTS FORECASTS
David Selznick Productions
"REBECCA," the best seller, by Daphne Du Maurier, to be directed by Alfred Hitchcock, ("The Lady Vanishes," "Secret Agent," and "The 39 Steps"), a society drama, in which a young orphaned girl meets in Monte Carlo a middle-aged Englishman, a widower, and falls in love with him. Although he, too, is madly in love with her, when they marry and move to his estate in England, she conceives the notion that he was still in love with his dead wife, Rebecca, until a crisis arises and she is told by her husband what a "rotter" she had been. He confesses to her that she had goaded him into murdering her, and then he made it appear as if she had drowned in her boat during a storm. The two have some heart-breaking experiences when a year later the boat is found and in it the skeleton of Rebecca, but the young wife encourages him to pretend innocence, until the coroner's jury finds that Rebecca's death was suicide.
Comment: The story material is powerful. The finding of the boat and of Rebecca's skeleton in it ; the agony both husband and wife experience lest the hero be held for murder; the inquest by a coroner's jury; the heroine's presence at the hearing and her fainting—all these and other situations are powerful.
Forecast: In producing this picture. Mr. Selznick will be confronted with a serious problem—how to avoid condoning murder; for the hero, after all, commits a murder, no matter how justified he may have been. In all probability some alteration in that part of the plot will be made, perhaps presenting Rebecca as really meeting either deliberate or accidental death by drowning, and the innocent hero being accused for her murder. Perhaps the death should be accidental, so as to avoid giving offense to some religions, which consider suicide a mortal sin. With the care Mr. Selznick gives his productions, there should not be in any exhibitor's mind the least doubt that he will give the right solution to this problem. Consequently, the picture should turn out excellent in quality as well as box office performance.
