Daphne du Maurier's 1938 gothic novel Rebecca has been adapted almost a dozen times between multiple films, television productions, and radio shows. The best known adaptation is Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and famously changed the ending of the book to please censors who insisted the plot's central murder be changed to an accident.
Netflix threw its hat in the ring with a new Rebecca movie, starring Armie Hammer and Lily James as Maxim de Winter and The Unnamed Narrator (aka the second Mrs. de Winter), and this one also tweaks the ending to serve its own purposes. Here's how Rebecca the 2020 movie differs from Daphne du Maurier's novel.
Maxim’s inquisition
Image: Kerry Brown / Netflix
The climax of Rebecca in both the book and the movie is the reveal that Rebecca de Winter was a sociopath and a serial cheater. When her body is discovered, Maxim confesses to shooting Rebecca dead in her cottage by the sea and covering up her murder by locking her corpse in the cabin of her boat and sinking it off the coast.
The inquisition into Rebecca’s death is different in the book. It is not public or held in a courthouse, as the movie portrays, and does not end with Maxim being arrested. In the book, the inquisition is private and Maxim is never detained. The broad strokes of the ending from there are the same, with Rebecca’s cousin Jack Favell producing a note from the night of Rebecca’s death and calling the suicide verdict into question, but the manner of finding the doctor who diagnosed Rebecca’s cancer falls differently.
In the book, finding Dr. Baker is a more civil affair, with Maxim, the Inspector, Jack, and the Unnamed Narrator waiting until the next day to call on the doctor together to find out why she made her appointment. The movie adds more drama to the discovery and has the Unnamed Narrator drive to London alone to discover the truth by herself, with the Inspector trailing after her. The overall result is the same. Rebecca’s cancer was terminal, and the meaning of her final conversation with Maxim changes: She goaded him into killing her to spare her the pain of dying slowly and to ruin his life in the wake of her death.
Manderley
RIP Manderley. You were really old and big.
Image: Netflix
The image, or rather the suggestion, of Manderley burning to the ground is the closing paragraph of Rebecca the novel. Maxim and the Unnamed Narrator drive up from London, having “cleared” Maxim’s name of Rebecca’s murder and notice a red glare on the horizon as they approach their home. The Unnamed Narrator mistakes it for the dawn, but Maxim’s reaction and the flakes of ash in the air make the final image unmistakable — Manderley is aflame.
The movie continues past this moment to show the de Winters approaching Manderley and making sure their servants are alive, which leads to the film’s newly fabricated ending for Mrs. Danvers (see below).
Mrs. Danvers
Mrs. Danvers' ending better resembles her character in Alfred Hitchcock's "Rebecca" than the original book.
Image: Kerry Brown / Netflix
Mrs. Danvers’ fate is one of the movie’s biggest deviations from du Maurier’s ending. In the book, it is only hinted that Danvers set the fire at Manderley, but in the film, she is shown strewing gasoline, lighting the house on fire, and confessing her crime (and her feelings for Rebecca) to the Unnamed Narrator. Shortly after her confession, she dies by suicide when she throws herself into the same sea Rebecca drowned in.
In the book, Danvers is presumed alive after the fire. The Unnamed Narrator wonders “what [Danvers] is doing now” in the book’s opening chapters. The subtext of her love for Rebecca remains subtext in the novel as well, while the film’s version of Danvers is more or less explicit about her romantic feelings for the late and terrible Mrs. de Winter.
The Unnamed Narrator’s ending
On one hand, he did a murder. On the other hand, he's Armie Hammer. The choice was hers and she took it.
Image: Kerry Brown / Netflix
Even though Rebecca the book ends with the image of Manderley burning, readers know what happened after because the book’s first two chapters are written from the Unnamed Narrator’s perspective long after the fire. The narrator describes her post-Manderley life with Maxim as an unglamorous but comfortable existence where they live in shabby hotels, get hype about reading cricket scores in English newspapers, and do their damnedest never to think about Manderley or Rebecca again. It’s not particularly romantic, with the narrator saying “our little hotel is dull, and the food indifferent,” and emphasizing the “peace and security” over her relationship with Maxim, but hey — her husband is a murderer and they’ve been through a lot.
The movie makes the de Winters’ escape from England a much sexier affair and ends with the happy couple being fully in love with each other at a gorgeous hotel in Egypt. For the record, author Daphne du Maurier did not consider Rebecca a romance and was famously annoyed with people who interpreted it as such.
Rebecca is streaming now on Netflix.
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October 22, 2020 at 05:00PM
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How Netflix's "Rebecca" ending is different from the book - Mashable
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