strange and random happenstance

Rebecca's Tale by Sally Beauman
Published by: HarperCollins e-books
Publication Date: 2000
Format: Kindle, 466 Pages
Rating: ★
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Colonel Julyan has always wondered if he did wrong by Rebecca. He was her only real friend when she was the mistress of Manderley and he never looked too closely at the verdict of suicide once it was revealed she was dying of cancer. Could her husband, Maxim, have killed her in a jealous rage without ever realizing she was using him to end her life? Ever since that day in London, before Manderley burnt to the ground, the Colonel has had questions and has never searched for the answers. Almost twenty years have passed, Maxim is now dead, but the sensational tales of Rebecca de Winter and Manderley are still dredged up by the press every few years. There are even a few books circulating about. But the Colonel thinks that he has put the past behind him. That is until Terence Gray appears asking questions and giving the Colonel nightmares. The Colonel has always kept his suspicions close to his chest. Never even telling his daughter about his misgivings. But his health is failing and perhaps the last thing he needs to do before he dies is settle his score with Rebecca and that might just begin with letting Terence Gray in. Because Terence knows that the Colonel holds all the cards, the village gossips have given him tons of hearsay, but he needs the truth. He needs the truth about Rebecca, because it might just be his truth as well.

For years I have staunchly refused to read Rebecca's Tale. Having had a bad experience reading Susan Hill's Mrs. de Winter I swore off all books that were prequels, sequels, or retellings of Rebecca vowing to cling only to the words of the great Daphne Du Maurier. And then I waivered. Why did I waiver? Why couldn't I have been steadfast? Why couldn't I have found some other something, anything, to fill this last day of Du Maurier December instead of forcing myself to slog through this book? Because Rebecca's Tale is way longer than you'd think, the almost 500 pages are set in eight point font if you buy the book and then return it to Amazon realizing your eyes can't take eight point font and instead read it on your Kindle. But my main problem is the hubris to think that you can write a sequel to Rebecca and even use Daphne Du Maurier's famous opening line slightly tweaked as if you had the genius to come up with it on your own? Oh Sally Beauman, shame, shame, shame. There's a reason there are so few reimaginings of Rebecca versus the work of Jane Austen. Everyone else knew better! Everyone knows not to randomly take plot points from other characters and make then apply to Rebecca. Everyone knows not to purposefully defecate on a classic with reinterpreting every little thing and hating on that which Du Maurier held dear. Everyone but you that is.

Yet if this book is any indication of Sally Beauman's ability as a writer she's just not that good. She doesn't go in for subtly or nuance, instead using a blunt instrument to hammer home every point a thousand times over. While Du Maurier might have lacked nuance in her earlier writing or some of her dramatic reveals, she was unparalleled in using the nuance of language to covey her story. So Beauman couldn't have been a worse choice to carry on Du Maurier's legacy, a writer like her isn't humble enough to understand there are some things you just can't improve on. Instead she used heavy-handed narration. Repeating ad nauseum that a narrator has a bias, thus casting aspersions on Du Maurier's own writing! As for her own? She shows bias by making Colonel Julyan a misogynist who doesn't get the irony of his repeatedly telling Terence to beware bias. Remember bias, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, and here's a bat over your head if you haven't grasped the concept of unreliable narrators. But with all the heavy-handed foreshadowing you might just have missed the neon warning sign of bias. Between all the "no inkling then of the revelations that were to come today" and "I...wasn’t to understand its significance for several days" or "and it was then that she gave me information that would prove crucial, though I didn’t realize that immediately" you might have started a drinking game to pass the time and passed out in the process.

As for what drives Rebecca's Tale? There really aren't unanswered questions or loose ends to tie up from Du Maurier's story so the majority of this book is laboriously rehashing the details of Rebecca over and over and over. Big reveals being things we already knew but these characters didn't, like Rebecca's inability to have children. Did we need two hundred pages leading up to this reveal that shocked Terence to his core? NO! Because Du Maurier had done and dusted it before. What loose ends Du Maurier did leave are not answered here at all. Because the only wise move Sally Beauman makes is to know that she is ill equipped to answer those things which are better left unanswered. So we have a book with hundreds of pages devoted to revealing that what we knew and then when she does start to diverge, when she does start to create her own story she decides to purposefully leave everything open-ended. Excuse me? So this book is basically the characters from Rebecca analyzing their own story and then coming to no solid conclusions? But not in a fun Jasper Ffordian way, in a horrible, stodgy, dissertation sort of way? Why would anyone want to write this book let alone read it? Sally Beauman purposefully not filling in the blanks from Maxim's father's will to what really happened with Rebecca and her father filled me with such rage that I almost threw my Kindle across the room until I remembered it wasn't the Kindle's fault. It was Sally Beauman's.

Though by far the most frustrating section of this book is when we finally read "Rebecca's Tale." Here's the first person narration of Rebecca we've been waiting for all along and boy does it disappoint. Because ironically, the characters searching for answers we already knew at least had a bit of mystery, a bit of a forward momentum. Here Rebecca elliptically lays everything out. And while she omits a lot it's too straightforward. There's no way to connect to the story. There's no element of the hunt anymore so these revelations don't feel earned by the writer or the reader. Plus the misogynistic tone of Colonel Julyan starts to spill into Rebecca's own story. If I didn't know for a fact that Sally Beauman is a women I'd say she was a man who really hates women. Maybe she's just a woman who hates other women? Because how else can I account for the victim blaming which oozes off these pages? Rebecca was raped as a seven year old child in France by a fourteen year old boy. She isn't just blamed by her mother and all the locals, Max blames her and even starts to identify with her rapist. What. The. Fuck? If this was a gimmick to tar Maxim, it doesn't work, instead it tars the author. She comes across as someone who wouldn't support the #MeToo movement and in fact might go on television and claim he sexual assault was all her fault. Yes, Du Maurier did write a story about the destruction of a strong willed woman. But she would not have written her ever as a victim.

The biggest problem though with Rebecca's Tale is that while Sally Beauman obviously knows her Du Maurier she doesn't understand it. She can throw out as many hints to her life and work from J.M. Barrie to The Birds, but she doesn't understand the true underpinnings of Rebecca. Instead she tries to force a statement about women and marriage and subservience that doesn't connect to her source material at all. Rebecca had it's roots in Jane Eyre, and both stories deal with the roles women have in society and what that means. Yet both the second Mrs. de Winter and Jane in the end are the ones with power. They love and care for their husbands but they are in complete and total control. By entering a state of wedded bliss they didn't give up their power they eventually found it. Therefore to have Colonel Julyan's daughter throw away her past as a caretaker and deny herself marriage for freedom shows just how ignorant Sally Beauman is, she doesn't understand the power shifts. The whole point of Du Maurier's book is that women can have power in traditional roles that you wouldn't think would give them power. As much as I have mixed feelings over Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea at least she understood her source material. She GOT Jane Eyre and therefore made a classic in her own right. She understood women and power and wasn't about distorting the original but about giving it an even deeper meaning instead of victim blaming and sweeping the ashes under the carpet.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 3 comments  

Labels: #MeToo, Daphne Du Maurier, Du Maurier December, J.M. Barrie, Jane Eyre, Jasper Fforde, Jean Rhys, Kindle, Mrs. de Winter, Rebecca, Rebecca's Tale, Sally Beauman, Sequels, Susan Hill, The Birds, Wide Sargasso Sea

If you follow me on social media you might have heard some rather declarative statements on November 14th when Netflix announced they were doing a new version of Rebecca starring Lily James and Armie Hammer. It's not that I object to their being a new Rebecca, I just happen to object to almost everything we know so far about this project. Let's start with Armie Hammer... um, he's not British. Not that I'll hold that against him... what I hold against him is that he's only three years older than Lily James. Maxim de Winter is about twenty-five years older than his twenty-one year old bride, not three! Lily could work, I honestly have liked her in everything she's been in, she just needs a different leading man. Because of all the actors out there, you need a certain something to BE Maxim de Winter, something indefinable. For example I was just watching The Addams Family last night and Raúl Juliá, he would have been an amazing Maxim. Armie, not so much.

Now let's break down the other aspects of the production. The book is being adapted by Jane Goldman, best known for two of the worst X-Men films and the Kingsman franchise, big budget superhero blockbusters don't exactly mesh well with Daphne Du Maurier unless you're keeping maybe two ideas and scrapping the rest of the story like Hitchcock did with The Birds. Yes, Goldman also adapted Stardust, which I liked, but she also did The Woman in Black, which I hated, making her hit-and-miss with adaptions. As for the director Ben Wheatley, having two episode of Doctor Who I disliked AND that horrid adaptation of High-Rise on his resume aren't endearing him to me in the least. Then I have questions for the team, is it going to be a jam-packed two hour production or a lavish four hour miniseries, because there's more chance in doing justice to the book if it's four hours. But with Netflix it could go either way... Here's hoping they salvage something good out of this star-crossed crew instead of making me hate it more than I hate the Charles Dance version.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 1 comments  

Labels: Armie Hammer, Charles Dance, Daphne Du Maurier, Doctor Who, Du Maurier December, High-Rise, Hitchcock, Lily James, Netflix, Raul Julia, Rebecca, Stardust, The Addams Family, The Birds, The Woman in Black, X-Men

My father had only one rule for Christmas—it had to be snowing when we went for the tree. Snow had to be in the air. My father had a reverence for seasons. He also believed in magic. This was, after all, the man who in late October would sit at dawn in his duck skiff waiting for the Mallards to rise in the morning mist. It was all about reverence and magic.

So, I would sit anxiously looking out my bedroom window at the grey, smudged sky waiting for it to open, waiting for God to make our neighborhood a gently shaken snow globe. My father expected patience. In the tradition of his own boyhood, the tree would not be put up and decorated until Christmas Eve. We had time.

Then it happened. It always happened. The heavens began to sift snow down on our little town of De Pere. The wind coming off the Fox River blew it up between the houses and the adventure would begin. Sherpas in search of our destiny! We bundled into the car and headed for the Hockers Farm on the outskirts of town, a little way beyond the city limits, just past the Mile-Away Tavern.

It was a working farm that was transformed each December. Snow fencing was run around the barnyard and Christmas lights were strung on poles. The Hockers brothers had harvested the trees and they were set against the fencing and leaned against the barn. The lights, the trees, the smells from the warm barn, the snow swirling about awakened our imaginations to the possibilities of the days ahead. If I had fretted by my bedroom window in anticipation, I was now a dizzy snow angel.

It was always a time of ritual when Doc Lefebvre arrived at Hockers. Large of heart, but with little means, the brothers relied on my father’s kindness throughout the year. There were, of course, the eggs that would appear on the porch in an old wire basket and the occasional plucked chicken arrived in time for Sunday dinner, but it was the ritual of the tree where the Hockers expressed their deepest appreciation to my father. Their affection was real and even as a boy, I could feel it though my fingers and toes were numb, numb from waiting in the snow for the adventure to unfold.

It seemed to me that we inspected every tree in the yard, discussed its merits and then, ultimately, heard the brothers’ verdict—it was not good enough. Then, finally, frostbitten and tired, we would come upon the tree, the tree that the brothers had hand selected much earlier. It was hidden for that special moment of discovery and revelation. The procession of carrying the tree and tying it to the car was done with the greatest reverence—it outdid the celebration of Midnight Mass. As always, it was a gift, no payment could be negotiated despite my father’s protests.

This was the way we celebrated the choosing of the Christmas tree during the first half of the 1950s. It was a time of joy when simple friendship and kindness guided us to the perfect tree.

My father had been ill for a long time. Diagnosed with cancer in 1946, he struggled to live until the autumn of 1956. He died two weeks after my eighth birthday on a clear October day when the ducks were flying out over Green Bay. I was bewildered and lost.

My mother had never gone to get the Christmas tree with us. I heard her on the telephone talking to one of the Hockers brothers telling him that we would be by. When we arrived on a late, cold, snowless afternoon, the brothers were standing in the yard holding a perfect tree. They tied it on the car without saying a word. My mother did not say anything either. As we drove off, I could see these big men in their overalls and huge coats wiping tears from their eyes with their red kerchiefs.

It was the last year that my mother and I would ever have a tree. In the years that followed, we would pack ourselves up and visit family elsewhere. We never talked about the Christmas tree or the Hockers. We never talked about my father.

I keep a snow globe on my desk and when Christmas approaches, I gently shake it and I look closely to see if a small boy and his father make it to the barnyard illuminated with lights, the barnyard that lives on in my memory.

I tell this story now, years later, to honor my father and to remind myself of the lessons I learned from him. I hope that they hold meaning for you—this is my prayer in the close and holy darkness of Christmas.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 1 comments  

Labels: Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Tree, De Pere, Lefebvre, Merry Christmas, Snow

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Reckoning by Joss Whedon
Published by: Dark Horse Books
Publication Date: December 24th, 2018
Format: Paperback, 112 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Joss Whedon's Buffy and crew are confronted by a future Big Bad who has traveled to the present, intent on stealing the power of the Slayers, becoming all-powerful, and destroying the world as we know it!

The lives of Buffy and the Scoobies haven't been too eventful for a while - at least as far as fighting demons and the forces of darkness are concerned. But that all changes when Angel brings news of an amassing a force that must be reckoned with: Wolfram and Hart, a legion of demons, and Harth, vampire from the future. Buffy knows Harth and his twin sister - the Slayer, Fray - from her meeting with them and Dark Willow in the future. But this army that has been gathered is more than she and her crew were expecting...Narrowly escaping an initial encounter, the gang travels to the future to recruit Fray and learn of their dismal fate should they fail to defeat this legion that has invaded the present. Harth is after the power of the Slayers, and being in possession of all their memories, he knows how to rewrite the outcome of this ultimate battle before it occurs. This is the reckoning...and it could be the end of Buffy, Fray, and all the Slayers, forever."

Not many books are released on Christmas Eve... but here's some Buffy. I'm not saying it's good. It's the end of the comics though. Clunky, just like the rest of the run. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Christmas Eve, Comics, Fray, Joss Whedon, Tuesday Tomorrow

Rebecca
Based on the Book by Daphne Du Maurier
Starring: Emilia Fox, Charles Dance, Faye Dunaway, John Horsley, Jonathan Stokes, Diana Rigg, Tom Chadbon, Geraldine James, Denis Lill, John Branwell, Jonathan Cake, Kelly Reilly, Anthony Bate, Ian McDiarmid, Timothy West, and Lucy Cohu
Release Date: April 13th, 1997
Rating: ★
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The gregarious Mrs. Van Hopper has hired herself a mousy little companion to accompany her to Monte Carlo. Yet she's put out that the old crowd aren't around and then laid up with a sniffle. Her young companion uses this time to become close to the one person in Monte Mrs. Van Hopper is fascinated with, Maxim de Winter, the inconsolable widow and owner of the great house Manderley. When Mrs. Van Hopper decides to decamp Maxim gives the little mouse a choice, go to New York with her employer or come to Manderley with him as his wife. It isn't a hard choice to embrace being the second Mrs. de Winter, a choice that even Mrs. Van Hopper approves, because at least someone bagged him. Back at his luxurious estate in England Maxim's young new wife feels that the shadow of his first wife, Rebecca, looms large. But even despite the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, and her doom and gloom, nothing can stop the newlyweds love for each other. That is unless Maxim is still in love with Rebecca... the discovery of Rebecca's scuttled boat in the bay will try their relationship, destroying everything or bringing them closer together.

The 1996-1997 season of Masterpiece Theatre was rare for me in that I caught it entirely. I was taking a year off before college and therefore had time to luxuriate in my much loved passions of reading and watching miniseries. The adaptation of Nostromo starring Colin Firth and A Royal Scandal starring Richard E. Grant were highlights that year. In fact when I recently learned A Royal Scandal was an extra on The Queen's Sister I instantly bought the DVD, despite my dislike of The Queen's Sister. Now if they'd just release Nostromo on anything other than VHS I'd be set because I'm seriously dying with only my old taped copy. But what I wasn't looking forward to was the season ending remake of Rebecca. This was at the height of my Hitchcock fanaticism, having taken film classes in high school and planning on taking more in college, and I couldn't comprehend why anyone would remake a classic.

Yes, Hitchcock didn't get it 100% right, but you can not deny that Laurence Olivier IS Maxim de Winter. It won best picture at the Oscars! So I planned to boycott the remake. The problem when living with your parents is that they have their own opinions on what they want to watch and seeing some of Rebecca turned out to be unavoidable. What little I saw made me instantly withdraw from the television room. My mom didn't last very long either, despite her love of Diana Rigg. For almost twenty years I have shunned this adaptation shuddering from the memory of those few glimpses. So I thought perhaps I should give it a second chance. Maybe Diana Rigg could be a superior Mrs. Danvers? Perhaps the beauty of Manderley would be done more justice in color with it's lush abundant floral growth? Or perhaps I should have trusted my gut reaction and avoided this piece of crap entirely.

What is striking about this adaptation is they have assembled some of the most talented actors in the British Isles and beyond and somehow sucked the life out of them. If it weren't for Faye Dunaway and Jonathan Cake I don't think a single line would have been uttered above a dull monotone. Rebecca is full of emotion and passion, both repressed and on full display, and yet here it comes across as the most flat and emotionless story ever. It should be turbulent and forceful like the sea, not fake and false like that shitty shack that was slapped together on the beach. After the first episode my dislike became more and more audible. Three hours and nothing went right. I was visibly cringing at all that they got wrong. The second Mrs. de Winter isn't just shy with a can do attitude but meek! Oh the rage! But even if I hadn't been comparing it to the book, it was awful. I kept making myself step back and think, if I hadn't read the book would I enjoy this? The answer was no time and time again.

While the heavy-handed foreshadowing might have been driving me loopy, if Du Maurier was still alive I know what she'd hate most... they made this adaptation into a romance. Yes, there are romantic elements in Rebecca, but that is NOT what the book is. The moniker of "Romance Writer" hung around Du Maurier's neck like a millstone her entire life. To have her greatest novel reduced to being nothing more than a romance? No. She would have snapped. Plus, I like Charles Dance very much, don't get me wrong, his performance of himself in Jam and Jerusalem, Clatterford stateside, is one of my favorite cameos on TV ever; but to see him groping and pawing awkwardly at Emilia Fox's cheek and sucking her face so that it looks like he's eating her. Eww. The book STRONGLY hints that the de Winters had a sexless marriage and yet here the demonstrative affection is overwhelming. It's the exact opposite of the book, yet oddly passionless. And that lame excuse made for their lack of children? Like Maxim would run into a burning building to save Mrs. Danvers? NO!

Yet, I have to give props where props are due. These go to Diana Rigg and Jonathan Cake, Mrs. Danvers and Jack Favell, Rebecca's maid and blackmailing cousin, respectively. I think these two actually read the source material, which Arthur Hopcraft obviously didn't when adapting this because who would purposefully change the famous introductory chapter and slap it into an upbeat coda? But enough about Arthur Hopcraft because this obviously ended his career if you check out IMDB. As for Hitchcock he proves that even the greats can get it wrong and he just didn't get Mrs. Danvers, and went camp and over the top. Diana Rigg nails it. The sadness that is behind that stiff facade. As for Cake, I don't think I can pay him a higher compliment than saying I really thought he WAS Favell. Rigg and Cake got the menacing down perfectly. Yet they also had the depth Du Maurier demanded of these characters. While they had the menace, they also had the vulnerability, and ultimately the patheticness of these two and how hollow their last act, destroying Manderley, really is.

But in the end, seeing as this miniseries was called Rebecca, you'd think they'd at least get her right? Yet they didn't. It's almost as if Rebecca is an afterthought. She should be front and center, there, oppressing Maxim and his new wife every single second of their time at Manderley, but she's oddly not there. It's like Mrs. Danvers and Jack Favell are the only ones who remember and it's only when they are around that Rebecca still lives. Otherwise it's as if she's long dead and long gone, not "haunting" them as should be the case. But this couldn't very well have been a romance if they concentrated on the Gothic nature of the book with Rebecca haunting Manderley now could it? As for when Rebecca actually appears... she's impressionistic and the camera is just too fucking close to her face. I wouldn't know it was Lucy Cohu, an actress I quite like who stared in the aforementioned movie The Queen's Sister, if it wasn't for the credits. Therefore we can say that like the book, there's a problem with Rebecca. Here it's her irrelevancy, there it's her possession of you body and soul. Let the book possess you and avoid this catastrophe. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Charles Dance, Daphne Du Maurier, Diana Rigg, Du Maurier December, Emilia Fox, Hitchcock, Jonathan Cake, Lucy Cohu, Manderley, Masterpiece Theater, Mrs. Danvers, Rebecca, Richard E. Grant, Romance

Rebecca
Based on the book by Daphne Du Maurier
Starring: Joanna David, Elspeth March, Jeremy Brett, Hugh Morton, Richard Willis, Anna Massey, Terrence Hardiman, Vivian Pickles, Leon Sinden, William Morgan Sheppard, Julian Holloway, Virginia Denham, Sylvia Coleridge, Harriet Walter, Neville Hughes, Victor Lucas, Richardson Morgan, Robert Flemyng, and John Saunders
Release Date: 1979
Rating: ★★★★
Out of Print

Mrs. Van Hopper has her own friend of the bosom. Paid to be her companion, but really acting as her dogsbody. When Mrs. Van Hopper falls ill her friend catches the attention of widower Maxim de Winter and when Mrs. Van Hopper decides to head home to New York Maxim gives the young girl a choice; New York with Mrs. Van Hopper or Manderely with him. As his wife. She hastily marries Maxim and becomes the second Mrs. de Winter. Though she worries and frets that she won't be up to the job, especially once she sees Manderely in person and meets the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers. She feels overwhelmed and Mrs. Danvers does everything in her power to make things worse for her new mistress. It doesn't help that Rebecca has left her imprint everywhere, not just physically, but emotionally. She is in the hearts and minds of the staff, the locals, and even Maxim and his family. So much is expected of the new bride, even a lavish costume ball, just like Rebecca used to host. How is she to continue when Maxim is obviously questioning the wisdom of returning to Manderely? But is it the place or the new bride he regrets more? Only the revelation of a horrible secret will show the truth to the young bride. 

If you are looking for the most accurate adaptation of Rebecca you couldn't do better than this version made by the BBC in the late seventies if you tried, and oh how I've tried. While my heart will always belong to Alfred Hitchcock's version as the obsession of my youth, this one is now my favorite, in spite of the whole last episode being out of sync. This was just chock-a-block with 1970s BBC goodness. If shows like The Pallisers, The Duchess of Duke Street, and Upstairs, Downstairs are your idea of what quality TV should be, then this one's for you! There's a nostalgic quality to shows that went for acting chops over everything else. The sets might be recycled and familiar, yes, that is the window from the maid's garret in Upstairs, Downstairs in a dowdy room in Monte Carlo, and that is the drawing room from The Pallisers transplanted to Manderley with a desk hiding a certain broken cupid, but that just gives you the familiarity that makes this adaptation feel like coming home. While I had never seen this adaptation before, Jeremy Brett and Joanna David surrounded by so many actors I have seen for years and years on the small screen just made me giddy that for once I'd found a Rebecca with less to complain about that made me feel like I was visiting an old friend.

Though, this is me, so you know I will have something to complain about; and that complaint is Joanna David, though it's through no fault of her own. Or maybe a little because I didn't like how they bracketed the show with how she was telling someone about her dream about Manderley while wearing pearls, but that was the director's fault. So the reason I had issues with Joanna David was because of the 1997 adaptation of Rebecca staring Emilia Fox and Charles Dance. Emilia Fox not only played the second Mrs. de Winter, a role here played by Joanna David, but she happens to be Joanna David's daughter. I've never really thought of them looking too much alike, but watching this adaptation from the seventies, I'd occasionally catch a similarity, the way Joanna tilted her head or pursed her lips and I wouldn't be seeing her anymore I'd be seeing her daughter and seeing the same expressions flit across her face was almost unnerving. Oh, how I wish I had seen this adaptation first. Because to constantly remind me of the atrocity that was the 1997 adaptation is a sin. Yet it's a sin that, logically, I shouldn't hold against them because this other adaptation was almost twenty years in the future. But then again I am fickle. Thankfully Jeremy Brett is no Charles Dance.

Yet then there's the perfection of Anna Massey as Mrs. Danvers to make you forget your woes. If I were to gather up all the Mrs. Danvers she would win hands down. She is perfection without ever veering too far into the crazy skid. She's not self-immolating like Judith Anderson or the only bright, yet undeniably unhinged, spot in a horrid production like Diana Rigg. She's simply perfection. Because the truth is Mrs. Danvers is a real human, not a caricature, and despite all her actions, they are rooted in her connection and love for Rebecca, no matter how obsessive that love was. I first fell in love with Anna Massey's acting when I watched He Knew He Was Right. This is a pitch perfect adaptation of Anthony Trollope's book that I love so much I even mentioned it to David Tennant that time I met him. Anna Massey stands in the way of a marriage but will break your heart when she relents to the match. After this I started searching out her work and realized I'd seen her for years in everything from Midsomer Murders to The Darling Buds of May. Yet it's the scene in Rebecca's bedroom when she shows it off to the second Mrs. de Winter that she will destroy you with her range. Going from triumph to boasting to melancholy all in the blink of an eye. Grief as restrained madness. Perfection! 

You'd think with all this superb talent that everyone is perfection in the cast. Well, you'd be wrong because there's Jack Favell... Jack is usually the character that is always gotten right even in the worst of productions. But here? Julian Holloway isn't Jack. Not. One. Bit. Jack is a slimy character, a smooth operator who has no moral compass and you could easily see as jumping into bed with his cousin. Therefore he needs to be equally repellent and alluring. Here he's just repellant. He's a "good old boy" who you'd expect to see wandering around the grounds in plus fours! Rebecca wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole! Oddly enough there's a modern equivalent acting today, Rory Kinnear. This Jack IS 100% like all the characters Rory Kinnear played for years. I have spent years bemoaning him being everywhere, especially in National Theatre Live productions. Two years ago I swear he was in every single production so I avoided that season like the plague. But for as much as I dislike him, annoying me to no end with his profuse body of work, he at least has range, and a few productions I actually liked him in. This proto-Kinnear? He has the range of a teaspoon.

There is one thing though, besides giving this version a proper release, that would easily upgrade it in my opinion, and that is if the music were fixed. The score of this adaptation is literally all over the place. At the beginning of the third part for about three minutes I thought they might have finally gotten it right and then it slid back into a mish-mash of styles. You will catch glimpses of Debussy, which might have occasionally worked, especially as it sounds like, according to my brother, that they might have been using "La Mer" which would be appropriate, but then as the happy couple approaches Manderely the music goes all old school cinema. You feel like you're watching an old reel where the dastardly villain is twirling his mustache while he ties the maiden to the tracks and waits for the train to arrive. I assume the train in this musicians mind is Mrs. Danvers, but who knows. It's almost comical in it's appearance. But for how much that music might have been too old school and inappropriate, don't worry, here are some synths thrown in to make it modern or to, I don't know, remind you it's the seventies despite the fact Rebecca doesn't take place in the seventies? Seriously, the music needs an overhaul.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Anna Massey, Daphne Du Maurier, Du Maurier December, Emilia Fox, He Knew He Was Right, Jeremy Brett, Joanna David, Midsomer Murders, Rebecca, Rory Kinnear, The Pallisers, Upstairs Downstairs

My Thoughts Exactly by Lily Allen
Published by: Blink Publishing
Publication Date: December 18th, 2018
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"I'm strong. I can be tough. I've been broken. I'm opinionated. I'm a people-pleaser. I'm spoilt. I'm needy. I contradict myself. I try to do good. I want to do good. I'm impassioned. I'm observant. Most importantly, I tell the truth. And this is my story."

My thoughts are exactly this: Get a better cover.

Not the Duke's Darling by Elizabeth Hoyt
Published by: Forever
Publication Date: December 18th, 2018
Format: Paperback, 496 Pages
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The official patter:
"New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Hoyt brings us the first book in her sexy and sensual Greycourt Series!

Freya de Moray is many things: a member of the secret order of Wise Women, the daughter of disgraced nobility, and a chaperone living under an assumed name. What she is not is forgiving. So when the Duke of Harlowe, the man who destroyed her brother and led to the downfall of her family, appears at the country house party she's attending, she does what any Wise Woman would do: she starts planning her revenge.

Christopher Renshaw, the Duke of Harlowe, is being blackmailed. Intent on keeping his secrets safe, he agrees to attend a house party where he will put an end to this coercion once and for all. Until he recognizes Freya, masquerading among the party revelers, and realizes his troubles have just begun. Freya knows all about his sins-sins he'd much rather forget. But she's also fiery, bold, and sensuous-a temptation he can't resist. When it becomes clear Freya is in grave danger, he'll risk everything to keep her safe. But first, he will have to earn Freya's trust...by whatever means necessary."

Isn't it lovely to have a new series to start for the holidays? And there aren't any other books of equal quality coming out this week either!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Autobiography, Elizabeth Hoyt, Lily Allen, My Thoughts Exactly, Not the Duke's Darling, Romance, Tuesday Tomorrow

Rebecca
Based on the movie based on the book by Daphne Du Maurier
Starring: Joan Hackett, James Mason, Murray Matheson, Joan Croydon, Spencer Davis, Franklyn Fox, Byron Russell, Lloyd Bochner, and Nina Foch
Release Date: 1962
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

The second Mrs. de Winter is speeding back to England with her new husband after a whirlwind romance. They are returning to his home in Cornwall, Manderley, which he abandoned a year ago on the death of his first wife, Rebecca. As they get closer to England Maxim is moody and volatile, but his young bride hopes that she will make him happy, no matter the shoes she has to fill. The housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, has gathered the staff to welcome their master home, despite having orders to do no such thing. But Mrs. Danvers goes her own way, so much so that she keeps Rebecca's room in the west wing as a shrine to her late mistress, which the second Mrs. de Winter finds more than a little unnerving. After all, she is the mistress of the manor now, no matter what everyone else might think of her. Yet everywhere she goes, from the morning room to the beach she is reminded of Rebecca, and Maxim's rage on the subject can only mean he still dearly loves his first wife. Perhaps it would be best if she just left. It would please Mrs. Danvers to no end, and perhaps Maxim would be happier. But then there is a discovering after a shipwreck, Rebecca has returned and she might destroy everyone and everything.

This adaptation of Rebecca might be the most interesting I've watched to date due to it's restrictions. Aired in 1962 it was broadcast live and had only an hour, with commercials, to tell the doomed story of Rebecca's life. Therefore what you get is the book told in shorthand with just the high points of the story being hit. Here's the broken cupid statue, here's Rebecca's sleazy cousin, here's Mrs. Danvers's shrine to her mistress, here's the party, and here's Rebecca, dead at the bottom of the ocean from her husband's hands, but seeing as she was dying of Cancer a verdict of suicide is easily confirmed. What with the more copious use of narration, which makes sense due to the first person structure of the book, I actually couldn't find much fault with this production. Sure, the transfer hasn't aged well and there's lens distortion, but somehow they were able to work around their limitations and give what I think is a very solid adaptation. Because they stripped the story to it's barest elements and then added back in some of Du Maurier's own lyricism what they ended up with might actually be my favorite adaptation I've seen so far.

The true reason this adaptation succeeds is because of Joan Hackett's acting. As the second Mrs. de Winter she oozed naivete. While I'm a huge fan of Joan Fontaine, in Hitchcock's version of Rebecca she has a tendency to overact with her eyes that sometimes borders on the absurd. Here Joan Hackett brought a more natural feel to the roll, something I'm sure Du Maurier herself would approve of as she time and time again claims that her father, the late "great" Gerald Du Maurier, created natural acting. With each and every movement and gesture Joan Hackett WAS the second Mrs. de Winter to me. The way she plays with her fingers and nibbles on her cuticles just felt so right, whereas when Joan Fonatine would just be scolded by Laurence Olivier to leave her hands alone after broadly signalling she was about to bring her fingers toward her mouth. But to me it all came down to a scene in the beginning. The first morning she's at Manderley the second Mrs. de Winter comes down to breakfast with her very large purse in tow. I don't know if Fontaine did this, but to do this in your own home? It felt so gauche and so right!

When I first heard of this adaptation the number one thing that intrigued me was that Maxim de Winter is played by James Mason. I never think of James Mason as the leading man, more the leading villain. Yes, I know this isn't the case, but his voice lends itself so well to villainy! Yet it turns out that James Mason is underused in this adaptation. Yes, this helps in the fact that he doesn't overshadow his new bride, whose story this really is, but having James Mason and then not really using him seems kind of a waste. As it is James Mason and therefore Maxim de Winter instead of being a well-rounded character is rather one-dimensional. All he is here for is heavy-handed foreshadowing. They are on the boat home from France, his young bride mentions swimming and drowning, he blows up. His young bride mentions the beach, "WE NEVER TALK ABOUT THE BEACH!" He finds her at the beach, "NEVER COME HERE AGAIN!" It would almost be funny if it wasn't such a waste of a good actor. And even if you'd never read Rebecca or watched Hitchcock's adaptation I'm sure you could have quickly put the pieces together that Rebecca drowned off the beach... so yeah, real subtle foreshadowing...

The one thing that really bothered me though was that unlike the book this adaptation HAD to have Mrs. Danvers burn with Manderley, just like Hitchcock. Just because Hitchcock deviated in such a drastic way from the book to absurd heights of melodrama doesn't mean every adaptation after his has to do the same. But in this case it did, if you bothered to watch the credits. Because this isn't actually an adaptation of the book by Du Maurier, it's an adaptation of the Hitchcock film. WTF!?! I mean, that's weird right? To abridge a movie and redo it for TV? In fact looking at the Theatre '62 season, of the seven episodes at least five of them were Hitchcock movies first! Really, was this normal? Instead of just showing the movie show their shortened version of it with different famous actors? In fact several of the other episodes star actors Hitchcock has worked with like Joseph Cotton! Yet while they claim it's an adaptation of an adaptation the screenplay writer obviously went back to the source, Du Maurier's own words. Because I think Ellen M. Violett's choice to include more narration, thus being more inside our heroine's head, led to a more lyrical adaptation in tune with the book. Whereas Hitchock was notorious for changing things to fit his needs, here it feels more like Du Maurier is speaking to us not cursing Hitchcock from the stalls.

Now, I admit I'm going to diverge from topic here, but I can not NOT mention the ads that are on this adaptation. Who was the genius who decided not to edit them out? I want to shake their hand! The ads are all sponsored by the gas board, better living through gas! I adored the wonderful vintage of these ads. But I also have a lot of questions. Who thought that naming the gas cooktop on the range the "surface of flame" a good idea. All I can think of is conflagrations. And how is gas flame "cool?" Isn't calling a flame cool an oxymoron? Where is Don Draper when you need some better copy? From stoves to dryers, gas lighting which didn't go out of fashion in the gilded age like any logical person might have thought, to whole house heating and cooling, I now know more then I ever could about gas options for your home in the early sixties! And I think that is wonderful. This was a real slice of life and by keeping it in the show it shows where the ad cuts had to be for costume changes and set changes, this was ALL LIVE you must remember. This literally took my viewing experience to the next level but also makes me question the wisdom of the ad executives. You are advertising gas, aka fire, on an adaptation of Rebecca? You do know it ends with the house in flames right? Not the best message to send. As for the ad from the American Cancer Society? Rebecca, the villain of the piece, was diagnosed with terminal Cancer... um... awkward much?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Advertising, Daphne Du Maurier, Don Draper, Du Maurier December, Hitchcock, James Mason, Joan Fontaine, Joan Hackett, Joseph Cotton, Laurence Olivier, Live, Manderley, Rebecca, Television, Theatre 62