Why Rebecca (1940) Turns Murder into an Accident

Rebecca (1940) changes the novel’s murder into an accident to meet the Production Code Administration’s demand that Maxim de Winter must not get away with murder. According to AFI’s account of the production records, the alternatives were to punish him or make Rebecca’s death accidental. [1]

The solution was contested. AFI records that Alfred Hitchcock proposed an accident that would still lead Maxim to conceal the death. Producer David O. Selznick resisted the demanded change strongly enough to consider releasing the film without Code approval. The accident remained. [1]

Hitchcock’s adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel stars Laurence Olivier as Maxim and Joan Fontaine as his second wife. At Manderley, their home, the new wife finds herself overshadowed by Rebecca, her dead predecessor. [3] The scene in which Maxim explains the death changes what she knows about both the first marriage and her own.

In the revised account, Maxim’s explanation still includes a blow, Rebecca’s fatal fall and his sinking a boat with her body aboard. [1] Making the death accidental changes the act at the centre of the story, while leaving deliberate concealment around it. The second wife is learning about something her husband has kept from her.

It helps to separate the two stories within his explanation. One concerns his unhappy marriage to Rebecca. The other concerns what he did when she died. Learning that the first marriage was miserable might make it less intimidating as a comparison. Learning about the concealment introduces a different reason for unease. Those pieces of information need not lead to the same judgement of the man telling them.

Robin Wood identifies a difficulty in the scene: accepting the accident removes the murder he regards as crucial to the story, but imagining that Maxim is lying would require evidence the film does not supply. [2] That objection keeps the criticism attached to the film’s actual choices. We can question the change without secretly putting the novel’s murder back into the story.

When the scene comes, keep his account of the marriage, the death and the concealment distinct. Notice how much each part changes the second wife’s position. The production records explain why Maxim was given an accident to describe. They cannot decide whether the scene gives her enough ground to build a future with him.

References

1. American Film Institute, Rebecca, AFI Catalog. History and synopsis; the production history draws on MPAA/PCA materials held at the Academy’s library.
2. Robin Wood, “Rebecca: The Two Mrs. de Winters”, The Criterion Collection, 2001. The discussion of censorship and Maxim’s explanation supplies the critical argument cited above.
3. The Criterion Collection, Rebecca (1940), synopsis, film information and credits.