Rebecca: feminist failure
This article contains spoilers for Wheatleyâs 2020 Rebecca film, the 1940 Hitchcock film, and the original 1938 Daphne Du Maurier gothic novel. Ben Wheatleyâs Rebecca, showing on Netflix, was always going to be haunted by Hitchcockâs 1940 film. Wheatley and screenwriter Goldman were right to try and create a new film adaptation of Daphne Du Maurierâs novel, rather than a remake of the Oscar-winning classic. They tried to give us a more explicitly feminist Rebecca, but sadly do not pull it off. Rebecca, in all her incarnations, is in many ways a feminist hero. She refused to let marriage crush...