The gothic romance is a sub-genre with a wide ranging tone similar to debating if a film counts as a Horror/Thriller. There are stories like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and 1946’s Dragonwyck, which is my personal favorite. Those films emphasize the romance with an undertow of darkness. With Rebecca, Alfred Hitchcock pulls the tone all the way down, close to the Old Dark House mysteries. The furnishings are pretty, but they’re largely suffocating, as is the staff led by the unforgettable and chilling Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson, never better). She haunts the estate like a soulless witch, always reminding the current wife (Joan Fontaine) of the greatness of the mysteriously deceased previous one, Rebecca. Through Danvers, Rebecca is a ghost haunting the mansion. Through Hitchcock’s lens and the Oscar winning photography by George Barnes, Fontaine is dominated by this haunted mansion.
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