Rebecca (1940)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. With Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Judith Anderson. A self-conscious bride is tormented by the memory of her husband's dead first wife.

Rebecca is a 1940 American romantic psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It was Hitchcock's first American project, and his first film under contract with producer David O. Selznick.

The second Mrs. de Winter is a shy and naive young woman, besotted with charming and urbane Maxim de Winter. They meet and fall in love while vacationing on the Riviera, and after a speedy marriage, return to Maxim's vast English estate, Manderly.

Rebecca (1940) is the classic Hitchcock gothic thriller and a compelling mystery (and haunting ghost story) about a tortured romance. An expensively-produced film by David O. Selznick

Romance becomes psychodrama in the elegantly crafted Rebecca, Alfred Hitchcock’s first foray into Hollywood filmmaking. A dreamlike adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel, the film stars the enchanting Joan Fontaine as a young woman who believes she has found her heart’s desire when she marries the dashing aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter (played with cunning vulnerability by Laurence Olivier). But upon moving to Manderley—her groom’s baroque ancestral mansion—she soon learns that his deceased wife haunts not only the estate but the temperamental, brooding Maxim as well. The start of Hitchcock’s legendary collaboration with producer David O. Selznick, this elegiac gothic vision, captured in stunning black and white by George Barnes, took home the Academy Awards for best picture and best cinematography.

Hays’d: Decoding the Classics — 'Rebecca' (1940) | IndieWire

Michael Hann: The director had to remove the one murder that takes place in Daphne du Maurier's story – but still created one of his creepiest, most oppressive films.

Overview of Rebecca, 1940, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, with Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, at Turner Classic Movies