American Cinematographer - January 2021 - 30

Revisiting
Manderley

BSC member Laurie Rose shoots a new
version of Rebecca. By Phil Rhodes

Photos by Kerry Brown, courtesy of Netflix.

n 50 years, the dawn of the streaming broadcasters might be remembered as
another golden age of cinema. Right now, the fight for dominance is funding a
huge range of productions that demand carefully applied craft and also, increasingly, the big guns of modern production technology: larger sensors, HDR, 4K
and beyond. Sometimes, though, that drive for high-spec moviemaking meets
a simultaneous desire for classical pictures that evoke a period setting; bringing
those two elements together became the responsibility of cinematographer Laurie Rose, BSC on Rebecca.
Daphne du Maurier's novel - on which this production is based - follows the
young new wife (played by Lily James) of a wealthy widower (Armie Hammer) as she
uncovers dark secrets about his late spouse, Rebecca, under the stern glare of forbidding housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas). Rose describes the source material as " a venerable piece of English literature. I've always liked a bit of du Maurier,
and I especially enjoyed what my fellow BSC member, Mike Eley, did more recently with
My Cousin Rachel. The writing is so fantastic. "
Though Rebecca - airing now on Netflix -would shoot mainly outside of London,
AC found the production unit hard at work in a location off Tudor Street on the balmy
night of August 3, 2019. In the scene underway, James' character visits a doctor during
her investigations into the wife who preceded her, in an attempt to clear her husband's
name. A small corner of London had been taken 80 years into its own past, this time a
SkyPanel S360-C suggesting steely moonlight from its perch atop a cherry picker and
an array of PAR cans simulating the historically warm glow of receding streetlights.
Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 screen adaptation, photographed by eight-time Oscar nominee George S. Barnes, ASC, took the Academy Award for best black-and-white cinematography that year. " I hadn't seen the Hitchcock Rebecca for some time, " Rose says,
noting that his prior collaborations with this adaptation's director, Ben Wheatley -
which include the features Free Fire, High-Rise, A Field in England, Sightseers and Kill
List - were not at all typified by somber period drama. " My love of film stems from my
mum being a big fan of the '30s, '40s and '50s eras of filmmaking, but when Ben and
I started talking about Rebecca, it might have seemed a bit off our path. And yet that's
what made it such an interesting prospect - to be able to get some budget and also
work with Working Title. It was a different world for us to exist in. "
The movie's world comprises three distinct parts, all set in a 1930s milieu of wealth
and privilege but ultimately yielding very different looks. " There's the summer holiday
romance at the beginning, all set in the South of France, when [the couple's relationship] is meant to be idyllic, charming and beautiful. Then they crash back into the U.K.
for the second part of the story - the wetter, dreary, more Gothic part when Mrs. Danvers arrives, and we've got the character of the old house and a kind of ghost story. The
third part, which is quite short, is when our new Mrs. de Winter undergoes an emotional change, grows up and develops a darker side. It's the detective story where she takes
control of her destiny, for good or bad. "

30 / JANUARY 2021

American Cinematographer - January 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - January 2021