Alfred Hitchcock must have been a fan of Daphne du Maurier. The director adapted the English storywriter three times for the screen. The first, Jamaica Inn (1939), was forgettable. The other two, Rebecca (1940) and The Birds (1963), are masterpieces.
This Saturday, the FOCUS Film Society will screen Rebecca in honor the film’s 75th anniversary and the recent death of its star, Lynn Fontaine. Rebecca is a gothic romance in the Bronte sisters tradition, Jane Eyre for the early 20th century, complete with brooding anti-hero haunted by the past (Laurence Olivier), a disused wing of an ancestral castle, servants who know more than they’re saying and a protagonist-heroine (Fontaine) struggling with an unfamiliar, potentially dangerous milieu. Fontaine was unlike the Hollywood glamor gals of the 1930s; she was a fresh unaffected beauty whose radiance seems contemporary 75 years later.
FOCUS Film Society screens Rebecca 7 p.m., Jan. 10 at Church in the City, 2648 N. Hackett Ave. For the society’s upcoming schedule, click here.
