The MoFo Top 100 of the Forties: The Countdown

Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)


This is Hitch's only film to win a Best Picture Oscar, but no, he didn't win best director (he never did). This is a David O. Selznick production, and it seems more like a Selznick film than a Hitchcock one. It's got terrific storytelling, wonderful acting and a sumptuous production. Hitchcock does imbue the film with mystery and suspense, but it seems to be more of a professional job and less of a personal undertaking to get at the audience, which, after all, is basically why Hitchcock films are so appealing. Even if Hitch seems a little bit hamstrung by being a team player here, the plot is so ingenious and the characters so interesting that it's definitely a must-see and probably the best film Hitch made during the 1940s (and yes, I realize many feel that film should be Notorious, but feel free to keep that opinion if it's yours ). I don't know if I want to spoil it too much, but basically wealthy widower Laurence Olivier meets and eventually marries a simple young woman (Joan Fontaine), and later he takes her to his enormous estate Manderley where the overwhelming presence of his dead wife Rebecca threatens to shatter their marriage. To make things even more frightful, Rebecca's devoted housekeeper (Judith Anderson) goes out of her way to tell the new wife that she can never compare in any way to Rebecca. The strength of the film is that things are never actually quite what they appear to be, almost right to the very end.

National Velvet (Clarence Brown, 1944)



To me, this is a perfect movie. It's a Wizard of Oz-type flick. It's the kind which a normal family would sit around the TV or the dinner table and watch, and they would fully understand what it means to be a family and whether or not they qualify as a loving one. However, even if it's a perfect movie, the family isn't exactly perfect. There are always going to be members who think they're more important than others or who think that newcomers (forgive me, but unless someone is proselytizing me, I consider them one of God's Angels. I'll admit that I never knew that so many of God's Angels were drunkards before... ), but I have to make choices on how to "support" those less-fortunate than I. I'm not sure how I got from National Velvet to this, but actually I do. Nowadays, everyone is suspect, a drunk for no good reason, etc, while back in the day, people just panhandled. Well, I know they still do, and my father and my father-in-law will NOT give them anything when they ask, but I always do, and my wife says that's one of the reasons she loves me.



The film contains so many people's dreams and how they relate to each other that it's a perfect example of a mainstream screenplay which should still appeal to those of you who have felt that you've left those all behind. The screenplay is mainstream but the direction (presentation) borders on subversive. For a film which desires a happy ending, it punctures every single cliche along the way to ensure there is no happy ending. Even so... National Velvet is a traditional piece of storytelling. It also tries to support the idea that things are not all black and white, so, of course, that makes me think even more highly of it. Before I shut down, I have to mention ALL the performances. They're incredible. Not just Mickey Rooney, Liz Taylor, Academy Award winner Anne Revere, Donald Crisp, Angela Lansbury, Jackie "Butch" Jenkins, etc., but straight through to the announcers of the Grand National. This is a true family film, if you still have one to watch it with.