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Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca dazzled audiences in 1940, sweeping up the Best Picture Oscar and earning a place among the cinematic greats. But if you’re a fan of Daphne du Maurier’s original novel, there’s a good chance you noticed something missing.
A crucial twine that would have landed like a thunderclap was stripped from the screen adaptation, not because Hitchcock didn’t want it, but because the times simply wouldn’t allow it.
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In du Maurier’s 1938 novel, Maxim de Winter isn’t just a haunted widower wrapped in brooding silence; he’s a killer. Rebecca, the first Mrs. de Winter, meets her end not through a convenient accident, but by Maxim’s hand. Her manipulations and cruelty, and her final attempt to destroy, succeeded in provoking him to pull the trigger. It’s a dark, deeply human moment, and it’s gone from Hitchcock’s version.
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According to Screenrant, Hitchcock made the erasure due to the era’s morality police. Yes, the Motion Picture Production Code, known as the Hays Code, wasn’t keen on letting murderers walk free, especially if they were rich and charming and played by Laurence Olivier.
The code had teeth that if a character committed a crime, especially something as damning as murder, punishment had to follow. There would be no nuance, no sympathy, and certainly no ambiguity. So, to keep the film compliant, Hitchcock had to rewrite the truth, where Rebecca conveniently dies from a fall, and Maxim’s only crime is loving the wrong woman once.
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Joan Fontaine’s Mrs. de Winter still walks the halls of Manderley under the suffocating weight of a dead woman’s legacy. Still, without that shocking confession from Maxim, her story loses a layer of moral complexity. Her relief in the novel, learning her husband never loved Rebecca and shot her in a moment of provoked madness, turns into a watered-down revelation in the film.
Fast forward to the modern era, and Netflix’s take on Rebecca reclaims the original ending where there’s no censorship to dance around. The source material finally breathes in all its gothic, twisted glory.
Hitchcock may have had to play by 1940s rules, but he spun a masterwork of suspense and psychological drama even within those limits. Still, it’s hard not to imagine what Rebecca could have been if the director had been free to tell the story the way du Maurier intended.
For more such stories, check out Hollywood News
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