Chapter 5: Dueling Auteurs
“ Well… It’s not a ‘Hitchcock’ picture…”
-Alfred Hitchcock to Francois Truffat in regards to Rebecca during the Hitchcock/Truffaut interviews.
Good Evening…
Time will never change the eternal struggle of two ego’s butting heads over the direction of a story in any form. What is right for a picture is a struggle with any creative team attempting to realize its potential. At the forefront should be a strong voice that can command the path of the journey. Naturally, we experience those voices in different shapes and sizes and from various points of production. You can have the directors authority from the works of many recent artists such as Jordan Peele, Christopher Nolan, or Greta Gerwig. On the other side, you can have the guidance of a creative producer like Kevin Feigie, who steers the Marvel Studios ship with a touch so magical that its produces hit after hit. There is of course though, the productions that have the clashing of visions coming from two or more strong voices competing for dominance. The business of film today is such that, at least from the theatrical standpoint, the vision must fit the priorities of those who must guarantee the pictures financial success at all costs. We see such stories of battle usually when the picture fails and the fingers are pointed all across the room whether it’s the recent ‘Men In Black’ installment or the debacle with the ‘DC Cinematic Universe’. However, it’s always interesting to hear of a picture that was a success but the creative end behind the scenes was fraught with frustration and obsession. The goal is accomplished, but what is the cost of integrity and vision owed to the success. If you wish to see how far the obsession of a certain angle on good picture making can go, you need not look further then to see its prime example in history; David O. Selznick.
Selznick may be, from nearly every angle, the most successful producer and studio mogul in cinema history. There cannot be a denial that he produced some of the greatest and most successful motion pictures of all time, regardless of where opinion lies on each title. Selznick was a determined and detail driven man, not unlike Hitchcock himself. Starting as an assistant story editor at MGM (Metro- Goldwyn Mayer… you know… the one with Leo the Lion that doesn’t really exist unless a new Bond picture is out), he would work his way up the ranks. After breaking away from MGM to join Paramount, he then left paramount to become head of production at RKO Pictures (The one with the radio tower that you only see in Black and White on TCM). During his time at RKO, he flourished with hits such as ‘A Bill of Divorcement’, ‘Our Betters’, ‘Bird of Paradise’, and a little film with a giant ape known simply as ‘King Kong’. He eventually returned to MGM, where he ran a unit dedicated to prestige pictures that included such hits as ‘David Copperfield’, ‘Anna Karenina’, and ‘A Tale of Two Cities’. Yet despite all this momentum and achievement, Selznick was in the shadow of his father-in-law L.B. Mayer, the head of MGM. Wanting to set up shop for himself, he left MGM to form Selznick International Pictures. There, he would produce a picture that, adjusted for inflation, is still the highest grossing film of all time: ‘Gone With The Wind’. Amazingly, Selznick was able to have multiple fires burning on the stove; for as he was finishing up ‘Gone With The Wind’, he was seeing dailies of a picture that had just started shooting with Hitchcock at the helm…. ‘Rebecca’.
‘Rebecca’, based upon the celebrated novel by Daphne du Maurier, was a story that Hitchcock had wanted to acquire after he had read the treatment prior to its publishing courtesy of du Maurier’s brother. Prior to ‘Rebecca’, Hitchcock had previously dipped his toe into duMaurier’s world with an adaptation of her prior novel, ‘Jamaica Inn’. ‘Jamaica Inn’ would prove to be a frustrating experience, with its lead actor/ producer Charles Laughton causing constant interference to Hitchcock’s vision. Hitchcock later discovered that Selznick was in negotiations to secure the rights and even he knew that was money that was out of his league. All this time, Selzinck was keeping a close eye on Hitch’s work in Britain, and eventually extends him the invitation to America that he had been waiting for. In America there were greater technical possibilities, bigger budgets, and the chance to be where the majors played. A deal is eventually reached; with Hitch signing on to Selznick to direct not ‘Rebecca’, but a movie about the ill fated H.M.S. Titanic (cue Celine for a moment before you hear the record scratch). That particular venture never came to pass, even when Selznick had bought the humongous ship ‘Leviathan’ to use in the film. All that remained was that tale of an unforgettable presence that infects the estate of Manderley.
From the moment work began on ‘Rebecca’, so did the battle of auteurship between Hitch and Selznick. Hitchcock had been used to adaptations of popular novels, and had been accustomed to not sticking strictly to the source material. For him, the novel was a foundation for his interpretation that would not care an iota about staying faithful to the sources every detail. If you recall Chapter 3 on ‘Psycho’, Hitchcock carried this practice onward into the films that have established him as an iconic filmmaker. On the opposite spectrum is Selznick, who’s intuition for what the public wanted in their films was proven time and time again. ‘Gone With The Wind’ would further justify his claim to intuition, as the extremely faithful adaptation of that novel proved to be a lucrative path. Thus, Selznick was insistent that ‘Rebecca’ stay almost point for point as the novel read and give the audience a “picturization” of the acclaimed piece. Hitchcock already sees a warning sign as a creative and more or less plays ball with this decision, with his contributions coming from other decisions from the insistence of casting Joan Fontaine to the decision to age down Mrs. Danvers (portrayed spectacularly by Dame Judith Anderson). All amazingly working in tandem to tell the story of an unnamed young woman (Joan Fontaine) and her journey through the life of wedlock at Manderley estates, slowly learning of how much the first Mrs. De Winter had meant to its occupants.
Whatever the conflict within developing the story between Selznick’s vision and Hitchcock’s, neither would be able to get around the fact that they would have to alter the revelation of Maxim De Winter (Laurence Olivier) and his involvement in the death of the first Mrs. DeWinter. The novel portrays Maxim as having intentionally murdered Rebecca, whereas the film portrays it as an accident in order to keep Olivier’s character innocent and therefore justify him surviving into the end of the story with a clean and “moral” slate. Having no one of physical appearance portraying Rebecca, it allows Hitchcock to unravel her doom as the camera shows her path to death from what would have been Rebecca’s perspective. It’s one of the many things that do indeed give this the moniker of a Hitchcock picture, despite Mr. Hitchcock’s brush off in later interviews. Ultimately, ‘Rebecca’ does possess and utilize the Hitchcockian trait of keeping us in Fontaines point of view through much of the proceedings. The audience is just as confused and intrigued by the goings on in Manderley as Fontaine is, leaving us in the suspenseful web that is truly Hitchcockian, overall story be damned. More to that point, the film is constructed as intended by Hitchcock, thanks to his pre-planning and shooting for the edit. Hitchcock created his films as puzzles that would fit together perfectly in the editing room, which naturally drove Selznick up a wall when he discovered he could not simply re-edit Hitchcock’s work to his whims. Within that realm, Selznick learned that he could not simply control Hitchcock and that he could not always get his way. Case in point: Selznick’s original pitch for the final shot of ‘Rebecca’ was to have the smoke from the flames of the burning Manderley to form a giant “R” in the sky as the film faded out. Thankfully this did not come to pass, with Hitchcock going for the more subtle touch of revisiting a sleeve for Rebecca’s nightdress embroidered with the letter “R” burning up in the flames as the film concluded. Hitchcock was only able to achieve this because Selznick was conveniently distracted by putting the finishing touches on ‘Gone With The Wind’. In many ways, that anecdote would prove to be a premonition for Selznick’s eventual decline.
In the end, ‘Rebecca’ was a hit, a strange achievement of two clashing auteurs revealing a product that works for everyone in spite of that collision. It would go on to win Oscars for Best Picture (going to Selznick) and Best Cinematography (George Barnes), and today it still stands as one of the few Hitchcock films that truly bears the mark of two giants rather than just the Master of Suspense. It’s legacy today stands as a fascinating case of who’s vision shall dominate. To this very day, the clash between producer/studio and director is ever present, but rarely do they ever achieve a product that works and succeeds financially and with the audience. It is primarily because while Selznick’s trademark faithfulness to the source material and intuition on audience taste are present, you have a visionary such as Hitchcock utilizing his meticulous and specific construction to present the story in one way and one way only. As Hollywood and it’s business has changed, it is sadly much easier to alter and reconstruct a filmmakers vision through reshoots with different directors (as in the case of Justice League at Warner Brothers) or overhauling the edit with alternate coverage and alternate scripts (Men In Black: International).
‘Rebecca’ is an early experiment for how the business works in regards to the Studio/Director relationship and teaches both sides how to put their foot down. Though today; it does seem as if tables have turned since the auteur driven period of the American New Wave, coming back around full circle to those Golden Age Hollywood ways minus the interference of artistic voices such as Hitchcock and Selznick. For all the insanity and amphetamine driven obsession of Selznick (yes, he had regular shots of B-12 and amphetamines to stay awake), he was never one that lacked care for the story in an artistic form. The closest thing today that we have to someone like Selznick and his care is Kevin Fiegie, who drives the Marvel machine with the care of a fan of the source material (minus the whole amphetamine thing, thankfully that is not a factor here) and goes beyond Selznick’s ability by (according to most firsthand reports) cooperating and working in tandem with his directors. ‘Rebecca’ and its creation is an eternally relevant story in the regards of how moviemaking occurs, and shows us both the progress and simultaneous immovability of how that process is achieved. For the Hitchcock of it all, it is a clear message to filmmakers on how to pursue their creative vision in spite of the voices overhead that bark their vision out loud. If there is a positive outcome to all of it, it does show how those two forces can work together to create something spectacular.
Alas for Hitchcock and Selznick, there would be further and worse strife between the two. Hitchcock’s experience working with Selznick taught him much about how he would like to run the show without interference from the likes of a David O. Selznick. Post- ‘Rebecca’, Selznick proceeded to loan Hitchcock out to other studios where Hitchcock was to further learn how he wanted things to proceed once he broke free of Selznick. Their only other two works together were 1945’s ‘Spellbound’ and ‘1947’s ‘The Paradine Case’. Both would cause headaches on either side, and the end finally came when Hitch packed his bag and went on to form the eventually doomed Transatlantic Pictures. Hitchcock would bounce back though, and continue his career by making many of his most revered films between 1954 to 1964 with freedom from other studios that Selznick would never have provided. As for Selznick, he kept producing up till 1957, with none of his efforts achieving the heights of his earlier efforts. Even ‘Rebecca’ cannot fully be claimed by him thanks to Hitchcock and his enduring legacy. As it stands, no matter what film he made outside of his 1939 independent debut that has achieved a legacy, they would always remember him solely for that one picture. The fact remains though: he did care about stories in a way that is sorely needed from studio heads to this very day.
—————–
Until next time, Good Night.