Gothic Romance: Rebecca (Dir Alfred Hitchcock, 2h10m, 1940)
February, as long time readers are well aware, given over to romance; this February, we turn to its teetering atmospheric cousin, Gothic romance, a realm of darkness, obsession, and, as feminist film theorist, Diane Waldman identified it in 1984 in Cinema Journal , "the articulation of feminine fear, anger, and distrust of the patriarchal order", where younger women are drawn and repelled in equal measures towards a handsome older man, often with a past of his own. Over the next three weeks we will consider Gothic romance, from adaptions of perhaps its most famous novel to a vampiric couple trying to make sense of the modern world, to the master of modern horror turning his hand to a fresh take on the Gothic romance. We begin with the work that most encapsulates Waldman's definition of the Gothic romance, with Alfred Hitchcock's adaption of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca . The year is 1939: Alfred Hitchcock has already become a household name in Great Britain with ...
