Question

蝴蝶梦英文影评

跪求小说蝴蝶梦《Rebecca》的阅读分析，要求从5个角度谈：setting(背景)、plot(情节)、character(人物)、theme(主题)、point of view（评论）。字数多一些。不胜感激！！！！！！！要是好的话，奖励200分！~~~~

Answer 1

Rebecca (1940) is the classic Hitchcock gothic thriller and a compelling mystery (and haunting ghost story) about a tortured romance. An expensively-produced film by David O. Selznick (following his recent success with Gone With The Wind (1939)), it was Hitchcock's first American/Hollywood film, although it retained distinctly British characteristics from his earlier murder mysteries. The somber film's screenplay (by Robert E. Sherwood and Joan Harrison) was based on a literal translation of Daphne du Maurier's 1938 gothic novel of the same name, in the tradition of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. One of the film's posters asks the intriguing question: "What was the secret of Manderley?"

The film creates a brooding atmosphere surrounding the tragic courtship, marriage and relationship of a naive, plain and innocent young woman (Joan Fontaine) to a brooding and overburdened widower - an aristocratic, moody patriarch (Laurence Olivier) who lives in an estate named Manderley. The pathetic, bewildered and shy bride experiences fear, pain and guilt when psychologically dominated by the 'presence' (and memories) of the deceased first wife (named Rebecca but never seen on screen), and when she is tormented by Rebecca's blindly adoring, sinister and loyal housekeeper's (Anderson) recollections of the dead woman. Only by film's end, with the flaming destruction of the estate, do the real character and secrets of Rebecca's death become clear. Many well-known actresses tested for the part of the young woman - Loretta Young, Margaret Sullavan, Anne Baxter and Vivien Leigh (her role in Gone With the Wind (1939) made her participation impossible), and Ronald Colman was also considered for the male lead role.

This black and white film received eleven Academy Award nominations - and won for the nominated director his first and only Best Picture Oscar, beating out strong competition in 1940 from The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Dictator, The Philadelphia Story, and Hitchcock's own Foreign Correspondent. With his Best Picture win, Selznick became the first producer to win consecutive Best Picture Oscars. The film also won an Academy Award for Cinematography (George Barnes), and was nominated in nine other categories, including Best Actor (Olivier), Best Actress (Fontaine), Best Supporting Actress (Judith Anderson with her sole career nomination), Best Director (Hitchcock's first nomination in this category), Best Screenplay, Best B/W Interior Decoration, Best Original Score (Franz Waxman), Best Film Editing, and Best Special Effects.

Answer 2

I spent the majority of this film thinking about how lucky M. Olivier really was. To be able to wrap his arms around Joan Fontaine and kiss her. Oh my. She's one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen (almost, but not quite as beautiful as Veronica Lake). She's also absolutely perfect in the role of the second Mrs. DeWinter, taking a character that could have become a cloying bore in less capable hands and transforming her into a sympathetic and interesting figure.

The movie, on the whole, is similarly amazing, capturing the spirit and the tone of those great Gothic romances. Watching Rebecca, I was reminded (pleasantly) of Wuthering Heights; I do not mean to suggest that in some way this film re-tells the tale of Cathy and Heathcliff, but rather that Rebecca has the feel of Bronte's novel (I am most certainly not talking about the William Wyler adaptation a few years before the release of Rebecca. That's a terrible film that somehow manages to mis-interpret the novel).

I must assume that the guiding hand of Hitchcock played no small role in recreating the feel of a Gothic romance. There are very few that would be able to take a love story, infuse it with such gloom, with such a sense of foreboding, and still manage to create something that ends happily without it feeling like a cop-out. I'd also like to draw everyone's attention to the incredibly moving section of the film that occurs between the arrival of the second Mrs. DeWinter at Mandalay and the masqued ball. The emotional strain on the Joan Fontaine character is so palpable, so absolutely taxing, that it actually pains me to watch. I hurt along with her. Few other movies affect me so emotionally - one of them is Vertigo.

All in all, this is a fantastic piece of film-making from Hollywood's golden age. Laurence Olivier is in top-form, as he plays the quiet, sad Maxim and George Sanders is positively hateful.