Examining classic material through a modern perspective has become the latest triumph of versatile filmmaker, Ben Wheatley. The distinctive movie auteur, who has proven his skills in the psychological thriller, mystery and action genres, has reunited with his Free Fire’ star, Armie Hammer, for their latest collaboration, the romantic drama, ‘Rebecca.’ The director infused the new mystery psychological thriller with his own distinctive style that uniquely captures the darker sides of humanity.
‘Rebecca,’ which was written by Jane Goldman, Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse, is based on Daphne du Maurier’s beloved 1938 Gothic novel of the same name. The mystery film, which is the second adaptation of the book, after Alfred Hitchcock released his film version in 1940, is now streaming globally on Netflix.
After a whirlwind romance in Monte Carlo, ‘Rebecca’ follows former widower Maxim de Winter (Hammer) as he returns home to Manderley, his family’s estate on the coast of England, with his new second wife (Lily James). Naive and inexperienced, she begins to settle into the trappings of her new life. However, she soon finds herself battling the shadow of Maxim’s first wife, the elegant and urbane Rebecca, whose haunting legacy is kept alive by Manderley’s sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas).
Wheatley generously took the time recently to talk about directing ‘Rebecca’ during a virtual roundtable interview over Zoom. Among other things, the filmmaker discussed that he was able to incorporate the late title character’s existence into the drama in part through music, sound effects and sound design, which helped build the eerie, mysterious environment in Manderley, and continuously remind the characters and viewers of her existence and continued presence in the mansion. Wheatley also revealed the process of balancing ‘Rebecca’s different genres, including interweaving the moments of sweeping romance, Gothic horror and crime and mystery, in order to tell the whole story.
During the interview, the helmer mentioned that one of the challenges he faced while making the drama was the fact that he had to continuously interweave the title character’s lingering presence into the plot’s present day without showing flashbacks to her time with Maxim. The most present way Wheatley was able to incorporate Rebecca into the story was “within music and the creating of Rebecca’s themes…It’s also in sound effects and sound design, so a lot of the environmental stuff in Manderley-every door handle and drawer that’s pulled out don’t have the sounds of the things that they are. So the house itself seems to be subconsciously trying to tell the audience the secret is of what happened with Rebecca. It’s not important that you read or don’t read it within the first viewing, but it’s there.”
The filmmaker continued by noting that “Rebecca exists as someone that’s reported by the other characters. But whether or not you believe what’s being said is part of the way that du Maurier works…the film itself is not just a memory; it’s a memory of a dream. It’s being reported by the second Mrs. de Winter, so do you trust her?
“Do you also trust Maxim de Winter’s reporting of what Rebecca was like?,” Wheatley also asked of ‘Rebecca’s viewers. “I would put a big question mark over whether what he’s saying is true or not. Danvers is also quite slippery in the respect of where the truth is.”
Another main objective that the director had while adapting the latest version of ‘Rebecca’ for the screen was to bring Manderley, which in many ways is its own character, to life. “It’s location (was created) over five or six different houses in the end,” he divulged. “What we realized when we did the research is that the Menabilly, which is the house where de Maurier wrote the book, comes up a lot. But Menabilly itself is in Cornwall, so it has the (same) environment and cliffs (as the Manderley), but the house is tiny.
“The stuff I’ve read suggested that (de Maurier) was basing (the Manderley) on a house that she’d seen as a child, so we visited the actual house,” Wheatley further revealed. “It was a perfectly great house, but it wasn’t as grand as it was described in the book. It felt to me, really, that Manderley is the memory of a house, or it’s a memory from the perspective of a child, so everything is massive and overpowering. It’s a place that doesn’t actually exist, so we were never going to find one location that was going to make it work. Sarah Greenwood, the (production) designer, came up with (the idea) to bring together the best bits of as many houses as we could physically get to.
“There are two kinds of styles of these houses. One is new money, and you just build the thing from scratch, and (the other is) the family building it over hundreds of years, so you’ll have a Tudor house inside of a Edwardian house inside of another Victorian house,” the filmmaker added. “Each generation will knock a bit down and build a new bit, so you’ll get these houses which are just a mishmash of kind of architectural styles inside it. There are also passageways within it that have no rhyme or reason, either, and that was something that we were after…the idea of it wasn’t an actual physical space but a dream space.”
Wheatley also discussed the challenges of balancing ‘Rebecca’s different genres, since the story goes from being a sweeping romance to Gothic horror and crime and mystery. Harmonizing the various genres “was one of the main things that attracted me to the project. It felt like talking to the golden age of Hollywood, where films of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s would have a leading lady stand by a piano, and a pop star of the day would play a tune, and you think,”Why did they used to do that? It kind of has to do with the need to give value for money to entertain.
“I think the heart of the book is going to take you through (different) genres. It’s not one film; it’s four or five films for the price of entry for one movie,” the helmer continued. “It gives you that feeling that you’ve really traveled over time and distance. So by the end of the movie, the memories of France are so far away, and you have this glowing, warm feeling that you’re on holiday a while ago, but it was quite a very long time ago.
“Working through it and policing the tone of it just to make sure that it wasn’t too jarring between each section was important,” Wheatley further noted. “But it felt like we were in du Maurier’s hands as much as anything, so we had faith that it would cohere as it went from section to section.
“It might’ve been a worry if I’d not made films before that had the same issues. I don’t see it necessarily as a challenge as more of a treat to be able to go into those different kinds of environments and play there. To get to do a courtroom drama and a ghost story and an incredible romantic half hour at the top was a great treat,” the filmmaker also divulged.
In addition to spanning several genres and locations throughout the thriller, another one of the biggest challenges that Wheatley faced while making ‘Rebecca’ was finding the right actress to play Mrs. Danvers, who’s one of the most infamous characters in the history of literature. But the director was immediately drawn to cast Thomas in the role, which ultimately proved to be the right choice, as she made Mrs. Danvers both sympathetic and sinister.
“When I read the script, I felt very sympathetic to Danvers, and I felt like she was the moral center of the film in lot of ways. It’s almost like there’s a ghost film or an old version of the film that’s happening, which features Danvers, as well as the people who work in the house, Inspector Welch and the witnesses of what actually happened, and they’re almost winking at the audience and kind of going, ‘Don’t listen to those two. There’s something else that’s happened here that’s much worse than they’re letting on,'”
the director noted.
“Even though Danvers does some heinous and dangerous things, there are moments in the movie that poke through where she’s literally telling you that she’s a witness for Rebecca, and someone needs to speak for her because no one’s speaking for her. You can’t just go along with this idea of romance that it’s okay to murder people for your love. As much as you might think that’s all right, the gunning down of people in boathouses is pretty bad,” Wheatley pointed out.
“Kristin Scott Thomas is a fantastic actress, and we needed someone that would be able to do the menacing (things Mrs. Danvers does), but also would be able to show the vulnerability and the complexity of the character. To just do another version where she’s the evil Danvers becomes a trope and a cliché,” the filmmaker explained.
“I love the balance that Kristin has in it because she really enjoys the put downs and the aggression of it. But suddenly she turns it, and then you see there’s another load of emotion that’s going on. Certainly in the scene towards the end when she slaps the guy around the face, and she’s going, ‘My Rebecca,’ and doing that whole speech, you start to feel the loss, that maybe it’s not all right to (have) this hatred of Rebecca, and maybe what everyone’s saying about her isn’t necessarily true,” Wheatley continued.
“That’s what I felt when I read the script. I thought it’s easy just to paint (Mrs. Danvers) as this particular type of character when there’s all of these layers of information that you’re being given from different perspectives that don’t all stack up,” the helmer concluded.