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Rebecca (1940)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock · Shot by George Barnes · Cut by W. Donn Hayes · Music by Franz Waxman · Ratio Academy ratio · 126 min
How it was made
- Hitchcock, with Joan Harrison, Alma Hitchcock and Michael Hogan, produced a 45-page treatment that producer David O. Selznick rejected as straying too far from the novel; a new treatment closer to the source material followed before the first full script was completed.
- Robert E. Sherwood was paid $15,000 for final rewrites to the climax, but writer Charles Bennett said the finished script was "ninety percent the work of Michael Hogan", with Sherwood credited as the lead writer.
- Art director Lyle Wheeler designed 40 sets, 25 of them interiors, with matte painting used to add details such as upper walls and ceilings; two miniatures of Manderley were built, a large one for close shots of the fire and a half-size version for long shots.
- Hitchcock replaced Selznick's request to have the fire's smoke spell out a giant "R" with a shot of a burning monogrammed négligée case, and edited the film "in camera" by shooting only what he wanted in the final cut, to limit Selznick's ability to re-edit it.
- Cinematographer Harry Stradling withdrew from the project, and after Gregg Toland proved unavailable, Selznick hired Toland's mentor George Barnes to shoot the film.
- The shoot ran 63 days against a planned 36, on an $800,000 budget, having already been postponed twice before starting on 8 September 1939.
Behind the scenes
Elsewhere
More by Alfred Hitchcock
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