A look back into the 1940s

We've reached the 1950s, but before I enter that decade, I'd like to take a look back into the 1940s.

The 1940s were a turbulent time, filled with world war, the dregs of a depression, and changing social times.  Beginning with Rebecca, a dark look into lies and secrets, and ending with All the King's Men--which I suppose deals with the same material.  It would seem that not much changes during this decade.  But a look at the films show an interesting arc in the popular ideology and interests of American people
.

1940--The winner is a dark Hitchcock picture, Rebecca, where a young ingenue is sucked into her new husband's dark mansion, which is still haunted by the specter of his ex-wife.  Mr. de Winter is secretive, moody, and foreign.  The heroine is naive and foolish, but despite herself is drawn into the terrible mystery of Manderlay, her new home.  She survives the eventual fire, but the horror of it still lingers.  At the time this film won its award, the war was becoming increasing desperate, with America less than a year away from Pearl Harbor.  Like Mrs. de Winter, Americans were trying to stick their heads in the sand, but were still being drawn inextricably towards the fire.

1941--With How Green Was My Valley, you get the story of a Welsh mining family attempting to overcome oppression.  They aren't entirely successful, but there is a message of hope flickering, despite it all.  Even so it is again, a European tale, with a murky outcome and a depressingly disparate house and home.  America has been in the war for only a few months, but it has begun to take its toll.

1942--Mrs. Miniver is the story of, again, a British family.  It follows them as they attempt to survive World War II, while it is still years from ending.  This film has an uncertain ending, with some truly sad moments, but it is as a whole is hopeful.  It is more of a generic, crowd pleasing film than the other two, and shows there is starting to be some hope (or desire for hope) in the American psyche.

1943--Casablanca: the ultimate tale of unrequited love and heroism.  The film is about war, redemption, and the will to fight an oppressor.  The tide of war is turning.

1944--The strangest winner of the group, Going My Way is about a priest who saves a struggling parish by teaching the young boy's choir how to sing.  Wholesome, fictional, and filled with images of home and hope, this is the dream to show both to the young people fighting for their country, and the people who want them home.  The priests, the children, even the baseball----this is the dream of home.

1945--Coming on the heels of such an angelic film is The Lost Weekend, a film about a struggling alcoholic finally left along for a weekend by his family and friends.  He goes on a bender that almost destroys him, only to survive on a thread.  It's the end of the war, but this marks a darker time for returning vets.

1946--The Best Years of Our Lives explores the lives of returning veterans, who are having a difficult time settling back into their lives.  While it has the upbeat emotion (and ending) similar to Mrs. Miniver, there are darker scenes that reflect the sentimentality of The Lost Weekend.  When an airline pilot sits in an abandoned plane, he suffers the same hallucinations that an alcoholic might.  There are good times promised ahead, but the transition is a little rocky.

1947--In Gentleman's Agreement we see a man crusading for justice in a disillusioned world.  He wins out at the end, but at great cost personally, without a clear knowledge that he really changed things.  Like a few of these later 1940s films, it is depressing and confused, with a murky ending.  It depicts a morerealistic view of the world than the earlier, Capracorny films of the 1930s.

1948--Hamlet, the story of a confused prince, fighting for his father but constantly questioning himself and others.  While Shakespeare may not at first seem to fit with the flood of disillusioned veterans filling the movie theaters, the story of Hamlet--bloody, fearsome, and battle-filled while being psychologically disturbing--seems to fit right in.  These men and women are turning from the easy melodies of Going My Way and turning towards a more realistic approach to life as a coping mechanism.

1949--And lastly, All the King's Men, a story of a crusader who finds himself disillusioned as the man he thought would be the politician for the people turns out as corrupt as the rest of them.

Well, if anything All the King's Men puts a cap on the later half of the 1940s, a time when Americans were looking at more realistic films, versus the panoramas and epic dramas of the earlier years.  These movies, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly, center around the war happening at home and abroad.  They arc from frightening, to hopeful, to peaceful, to disturbed, and finally to a reality fighting against a new society.  The end of the 1940s is a dark one, but with perhaps a silver lining.  We're left with a reality that may be different, but is at least real.  These aren't showy theatricals in glittering technicolor.  They are real, at times gritty portrayals of average, unlikable men.  Well--and one prince.

Who knows what the stability of the 1950s will bring?

PS-My favorite?  The Best Years of our Lives

The Scariest Italian Food You'll Ever Eat

My decision for this week's snack went something like this:  "I want to make something scary for Rebecca."  I knew Rebecca was supposed to be creepy, and I knew it was Hitchcock, so I wanted to make scary, creepy, delicious food.  Obviously it was also important that we would want to eat it. I had many ideas, most of them involving chocolate.  I went on the Hershey website and found recipes for "Chocolate Sloppy Joes" and "Cocoa Currey."  I even found a recipe for "Chocolate Pasta."  But I think it was when I was seriously considering "Chocolate Chicken" that my friend AMS decided to step in.  She said, "That sounds terrifying."  And while that might be what I was going for, this was a friend I had invited over to eat my food.  But before I could snap that if she was so smart, she could should up with something--she did.  She said, "You know what's scary looking but really hard to make? Pasta with squid ink."

Now at first I wasn't amenable to this idea.  I don't want to ink a squid!  I also happen to dislike shellfish.  And when I pitched the idea to my roommate she said, "Absolutely not!  We are not going to have the apartment smelling like squid for days."  (Our apartment has a notorious lack of circulation.)  But as it turns out Squid Ink Pasta is not actually squid pasta.  It's a type of pasta with squid ink added.  So in fact all it does is turn the pasta black and give it a slightly salty taste.  According to AMS, this is an authentic Italian dish.  And upon further research, this recipe only became impossible if I was the one making the pasta.  Where does one find squid ink?  And so I trekked out to the North End in search of my scary looking pasta.

Thank God for Google.  I found a small homemade pasta shop with everyone that I needed (and quite a few things I didn't).  My arms full of yummy Italian produce, I hurried home to prepare.  And I think I turned out my best dish yet.  In any event it looks really, really cool.  Best Halloween pasta ever, despite it being July.

Scary Squid Ink Pasta
(serves 6)

Pancetta

You'll need:
Squid Ink Pasta (I used 3 of the containers above, about 2.5  pounds)
Pancetta (about 1/4 pound)
2 Red Bell Peppers
1/2 stick of butter
1/3 cup white wine
Garlic
Salt and Pepper
Parmigiano-Reggiano, for serving

1. Start boiling the water for the pasta.
2. Dice the pancetta into small cubes, pulling away the fat.
3. Slice the red peppers into small strips and chop the garlic. 
4. Combine half the butter and all of the pancetta into a sauté pan on medium heat, stirring frequently until  the pancetta is browned, not burnt.

5. Add the garlic, then the peppers.  Cook until the peppers are soft, not squishy.  

6. Add the white wine and cook until simmering.
7. Add the pasta to the water when it has reached a roiling boil.  The pasta should only be cooked for a few minutes, this pasta in particular needed about 5 minutes maximum.  Drain the pasta when it is al dente.

8. Add the pasta to the sauté pan. Mix everything together and season with salt, peppers, and cheese.  Serve and enjoy!

The finished product!

Terrifying.  And the credit goes to AMS.  Thanks!  I think this meal went a long way towards fixing an overly long, sometimes dull movie.  And of course my other ill-gotten, expensive North End gains didn't hurt.  Mmmm...buffalo mozzarella.....

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Rebecca

"You wouldn't think she'd been gone so long, would you? Sometimes, when I walk along the corridor, I fancy I hear her just behind me. That quick light step, I couldn't mistake it anywhere. It's not only in this room, it's in all the rooms in the house. I can almost hear it now.  Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?"  Mrs. Danvers to The Second Mrs. de Winter (Rebecca)

There are few directors that can be defined so completely by their work.  When one watches a Hitchcock film, it is immediately apparent that it is his film done in his distinctive style.  Instead of saying North by Northwest or Psycho, we say we're watching a "Hitchcock film."  Hitchcock's flair for creating suspense and for effortlessly terrifying the audience is legendary.  That's why what is most disturbing about this horror film is  not the plot, but the struggle between Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick, his producer.  The film loses that Hitchock intensity and suffers as a result.

The Plot
The film starts with the voiceover of a woman speaking as the camera pans over the ruins of an estate.  She says "Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again..." but goes on the say that it is impossible as it is now in ruins.  She then flashes back to where it all began.

Manderley

An unnamed young woman, played by Joan Fontaine, takes a job as a companion to a fussy, elderly old woman and they travel to Monte Carlo.  There she meets Maxim de Winter, played by Laurence Olivier, a mysterious and worldly British aristocrat.  When her employer, Mrs. Edythe Van Hopper, falls ill with a cold, Mr. de Winter decides to squire her around Monte Carlo.  They fall in love, and before she must leave he proposes.  The two elope and after their honeymoon he takes her to his estate in the south of England, Manderley.

Maxim de Winter proposes over breakfast

It quickly becomes clear that the childish, inexperienced new Mrs. de Winter is ill-equipped to handle the running of an ancient, aristocratic household like Manderley.  Though Maxim has married her because she is the antithesis of a proper British wife, this quality does not help her as she attempts to navigate through society and the house itself.  In addition, much of the house still exists as a shrine to the last Mrs. de Winter, Rebecca, who died at sea under mysterious circumstances.  Mrs. Danvers, played by Judith Anderson, is the housekeeper who was devoted to Rebecca.  She keeps Rebecca's wing of the house like a shrine, arranging the room as though she expects Rebecca to return at any time.  All of the linens are monogrammed with Rebecca's initials and her dog still sits at her door and barks.  Rebecca's "cousin" Jack Favell stops by and makes Mrs. de Winter uncomfortable with veiled references to her husband.

Mrs. Danvers shows the new Mrs. de Winter Rebecca's suite.

The new Mrs. de Winter also suspects that her husband is not yet over the death of his wife.  He is brooding and unpredictable, and Mrs. de Winter's inability to command the staff drives a further wedge between them.  In an attempt to prove herself just as able as Rebecca, Mrs. de Winter gets Maxim's reluctant agreement to host a costume ball.  Mrs. Danvers tricks her into wearing a period costume of one of the de Winter ancestors that Rebecca had worn the year before, startling Maxim and making him react violently.  As Mrs. de Winter runs upstairs Mrs. Danvers corners her in Rebecca's room, telling her that she will never be the woman Rebecca was.  Mrs. Danvers attempts to convince her to jump out of the window and kill herself.  Mrs. Danvers almost succeeds, but Mrs. de Winter starts out of her trance when she hears noises below.  A ship has been sighted out in the gathering storm and everyone is going outside to help.

Mrs. Danvers tempts Mrs. de Winter to commit suicide.

When Mrs. de Winter goes down to the beach, she finds her husband visibly upset in the forbidden boathouse that had been Rebecca's special place.  Apparently, Rebecca's sailboat has been found by the divers who had gone out into the storm.  When Mrs. de Winter confronts Maxim, accusing him of still being in love with Rebecca, he finally reveals the truth.  He hated Rebecca, who had been a beautiful, morally corrupt, unfaithful wife.  After he was tricked into marrying her, Maxim had played the loving husband to preserve appearances.  The night of Rebecca's death she lured him down to the boathouse and told him that she was pregnant by Jack, one of her lovers, and that she was planning on raising the baby as Maxim's.  As they argued, she fell and died after hitting her head.  Maxim loaded Rebecca into her sailboat and dug holes in the boat before pushing it out to sea.  He confesses his love for his new wife, and they embrace for the first time as she finally grows up into a woman and a wife.

Mrs. de Winter with her husband Maxim

A police inquest follows the discovery of Rebecca's boat.  Maxim suggests Rebecca committed suicide, but Jack tries to blackmail him with a letter showing she wasn't in a suicidal mood at the time of her death.  The blackmail backfires on him, however, as the men go to check on Rebecca's secret London doctor.  The doctor confirms not that she was pregnant, but that she had contracted a deadly form of cancer and would only have lasted a few months.  Maxim realizes Rebecca had tried to manipulate him into killing her, as a form of suicide.  Jack calls Mrs. Danvers and lets her know the truth.

Jack attempts to blackmail the de Winters.

Maxim drives home to find Manderley ablaze.  Mrs. Danvers, driven to insanity by the realization that Rebecca kept something from her, has set the house on fire.  She claims that she couldn't watch Maxim and the new Mrs. de Winter happy together in their home.  Fortunately, the new Mrs. de Winter has made it out of Manderley unharmed, and she and Maxim watch as the house burns down around Mrs. Danvers, who has locked herself in Rebecca's old suite.

Hitchcock's signature cameo, when Jack finds out Rebecca had cancer.

The History

Alfred Hitchcock

Dauphe de Maurier wrote her gothic novel, Rebecca, in 1938.  Much to her surprise, it became an instant hit, and David O. Selzick bought the rights to the book as a Carole Lumbard/Ronald Coleman vehicle.  But Coleman turned down the role, so Selzick eventually settled on Laurence Oliver.  Casting for Mrs. de Winter became difficult, until finally Selznick settled on the unknown younger sister of Olivia de Havilland, Joan Fontaine.  Selznick's greatest coup came, however, when he landed framed British director Alfred Hitchcock.  Hitchcock finished his last British film, an adaptation of another of de Maurier's novels, Jamaica Inn, before heading to the states for his first Hollywood picture.

David O. Selznick

Hitchcock was unprepared for the kind of "producing" that Selznick was now famous for.  "When I came to America to direct Rebecca," said Hitchcock more than two decades later, "David Selznick sent me a memo...I've just finished reading it...I think I may turn it into a motion picture...I plan to call it The Longest Story Ever Told." Selznick wanted to be just as involved in this picture as he had been with Gone with the Wind.  He sent memos, gave suggestions, and re-wrote Hitchcock's script.  Used to directing on his own, Hitchcock chafed at being forced to follow orders.  Hitchcock therefore did the best he could under the circumstances.  He edited the film "in camera," nullifying Selznick's habit of making last minute edits.  When Lawrence Oliver was cold to Joan Fontaine (he had wanted his girlfriend Viven Leigh for the role) Hitchcock told her that everyone else on the set hated her as well, making her give the perfect performance as a young, insecure, frightened girl.  He cast Judith Anderson, a famous Broadway tragedian, as Mrs. Danvers, and made her character both younger and more mysterious than she had been in the novel.  Hitchcock purposely made Mrs. Danvers appear as a projection of Mrs. de Winter's fears, having her pop up mysteriously and float rather than walk.  He even changed Selznick's ending, allowing the final shot to be of Rebecca's burning monogrammed pillowcase, rather than a smokey "R" floating into the sky. Despite his efforts, Hitchcock never felt that this film was truly his own.  And though Selznick insisted on adherance to the novel's plot, there was one change he couldn't appose.  The Hollywood Production Code said that the murder of a spouse had to be punished. In the novel, Maxim shoots Rebecca, while in the film, Maxim only thinks of killing her.

Publicity for Rebecca

Although Hitchcock was disappointed, Rebecca was an instant hit with both critics and audiences.  Selznick played up the publicity, even staging a second gala "premiere" for the film, just after the nominations were announced.  He needn't have worried, Selznick walked off with his second "Best Picture" Oscar in a row that year.  Although it only won one other award, that for "Best Cinematography, Black and White,"  Rebecca was nominated for nine additional awards.  It would be the only one of Hitchcock's many films to win the award for "Best Picture," and Hitchcock himself would never win for "Best Director."  While it was #80 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills list, what Rebecca is perhaps best known for is the character of Mrs. Danvers.  The creepy housekeeper is #31 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains list.  She has also been frequently used since as a popular culture reference, appearing in a Vanity Fair shoot commemorating Hitchcock's great films and being used as the name for an all-female queer rock group.  Though the film is certainly not his best, the character of Mrs. Danvers may be one of his most startling creations (well...after Norman Bates).

Keira Knightly and Jennifer Jason Leigh pose as Mrs. de Winter and Mrs. Danvers for Vanity Fair

The greatest development at the Academy Awards that year was the decision to have the results be sealed into envelopes by "Price, Waterhouse" after the votes were tabulated.  The information would not, unlike previous years, be given to the press before the ceremony, which caused some serious grumbling from the reporters.  But the decision created an air of mystery and suspense that boosted ticket sales and prestige for the Awards.  The race for "Best Picture," though awarded to Rebecca, could easily have been given to The Grapes of Wrath or The Philadelphia Story.  A damper was put on the awards when Academy president Walter Wanger announced that for the first time, the Academy felt no one was deserving of the Irving G. Thalberg Award.  But everyone perked up later when Hollywood favorites Ginger Rogers and James Stewart won for "Best Actress" and "Best Actor" respectively.  The Los Angeles Examiner noted that "As he has done in many a wild motion-picture scene, [Mr. Stewart] stumbled dazedly back to his table amid shouts and applause."  Stewart gave the award to his hardware store owning father from Indiana, Pennsylvania, who immediately placed it in a glass case that had previous displayed kitchen knives.

Mrs. de Winter and Maxim de Winter

The Verdict?
My friends were not a fan of this movie.  Which was dismaying for me, as I had such high expectations of any film bearing Hitchcock's name.  For a time I wondered if this film was like my experience with Vertigo, great when I watched it alone, but horrible when I watched it with others.  Maybe.  But this film was long, drawn out, and slow.  I could feel the palpable boredom of everyone else in the room.  It is also a film that doesn't always hold up well for a modern audience; Laurence Oliver's Maxim de Winter is Byronic to the point of being a parody of himself.  His line (about the kind of proposal that Mrs. de Winter should receive) that made us all nearly die with laughter was: "It should be in a conservatory, you in a white frock with a red rose in your hand and a violin playing in the distance, and I should be making violent love to you behind a palm tree."  The phrase "making violent love to you behind a palm tree" should never be uttered to a modern audience.  The film plods through unnecessary scenes, dragging out the plot twists with a heavy-handedness that often feels forced.  It is as though the film is saying, "Look!  Something is wrong over here!"  This has never been Hitchcock's style, but it is certainly the influence of Selznick.  Just witness his desire to have a giant "R" floating up to the sky in smoke.  What works in a novel doesn't necessarily translate to film, something Hitchcock realized and tried to correct.  When the climactic final secret of Rebecca's death is revealed I found myself less than surprised.  Even worse, indifferent.

Mrs. Danvers shows the new Mrs. de Winter Rebecca's fur coat.

Not to say that this movie doesn't have its great moments.  No one does subtle creepiness the way Hitchcock does.  To walk into a house where everything is monogrammed with the previous wife's initials?  To have the housekeeper stroking Rebecca's silk negligees and repositioning Rebecca's favorite hairbrush?  The devil is in the details, and the little unsettling moments elevate this movie.  While I enjoyed Joan Fontaine's performance as the frightened child bride, Judith Anderson's Mrs. Danvers absolutely stole the show.  She led her way around corners with her beak of a nose, gliding noiseless throughout the house.  I started when Mrs. de Winter did, as she looked up and suddenly saw Mrs. Danvers lurking.  And the vague lesbian undertones of the film only served to highlight the housekeeper's quality of "otherness."  Her eyes blank in contemplation of Rebecca, and a smile drifts dreamily about her face.  In the scene when Mrs. Danvers takes the new Mrs. de Winter through Rebecca's suite, Mrs. Danvers nearly always dominates the frame before the camera closes in, trapping Mrs. de Winter.  Fontaine's shoulders are stiff in her pale gown and she is always shrinking back from the frame even as Anderson, entirely in black, closes in.  It's uncomfortable, eerie, and yet also suggestive.  One of my favorite realizations of this film is that while I never learn the new Mrs. de Winter's name, Rebecca is written all over the house in many different forms.  I find myself accidentally calling the new Mrs. de Winter Rebecca--which was probably exactly what the author intended.

Mrs. Danvers thinks Rebecca watches the new Mrs. de Winter.

For the interaction between Joan Fontaine and Judith Anderson alone, watch this film.  No one should miss a villian like Mrs. Danvers.  Then again I do have a weakness for dastardly villains (much more entertaining than heroes).  Rebecca has its moments, and Hitchcock doesn't disappear entirely, but if you're looking for a classic Hitchcock film, look elsewhere and avoid the many tedious moments of this film.

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