by Nathaniel R
Armie Hammer and Lily James as Mr and Mrs de Winter
Netflix has released the first four images from their remake of Hitchcock's Rebecca which begins streaming on October 21st --- Excuse us, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. People will be quick to note that it's less sacrilegious to adapt the novel than the 1940 best Picture winner. Now, we understand that remakes are not automatically "bad," but there are numerous reasons why remaking Hitchcock films, of all things, is a spectacularly dumb thing to do. For one, auteurs that get adjectives named ever them are inimitable and so you lose the distinct personality. For another, Hitchcock movies have (mostly) aged terrifically well; there's a reason people still watch a wide swath of them and so many are still easily available to the public, referenced in so many modern movies, and an intrinsic part of culture...
Lily James is a decent enough substitute for Joan Fontaine's Mrs de Winter, and because we're not fans of Sir Laurence Olivier (the most overrated thespian of all Old Hollywood superstars?) we're fine with Armie Hammer. But still... there never is and never will be any replacing of Alfred Hitchcock, easily one of the two or three best movie directors that ever lived. Sorry Ben Wheatley. You're talented but Hitchcock is Hitchcock! Why would you do this to yourself?
The only piece of this we're truly interested in is Kristin Scott Thomas's take on sinister lesbian lady servant Mrs Danvers. Half of Judith Anderson's Oscar-nominated power in the original is the crazily haunting black and white cinematography and that movies in the 1940 were so elegant about suggestions of sexuality and evil rather than just plainly broadcasting both.
Still, if the fates of past remakes of Hollywood classics (and Netflix originals for that matter) are any indication people will talk about this new film obsessively for a week or two in late October and then it will vanish from the public consciousness by, say, spring 2021. Afterwards people will return to the Hitchcock classic again and again as if no remake had ever happened (see also The Manchurian Candidate, All Quiet on the Western Front, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Rosemary's Baby, and many many many more throughout history).