David Selznick

Production files detailing the construction of the musical score for the film Spellbound reveal an intense and complicated collaboration involving music editor Audray Granville, director Alfred Hitchcock, composer Miklós Rózsa, and producer David O. Selznick. Tracing the formation of the score from initial outlines through composition and editing shows how these four individuals contributed to the score’s development. Conflicting instructions from Hitchcock and Selznick as well as Granville’s preview score influenced Rózsa’s compositional decisions, and Granville’s revisions of Rózsa’s recorded music affected the content of the score. The music of Spellbound does not represent a single or even shared vision, but rather an intricate conglomeration of ideas, revisions, and interpolations. Illuminating these layers of discourse enriches musico-cinematic analysis by challenging conventional notions of authorship and artistic control in the Hollywood film score.

The critical consensus that Rebecca is a faithful adaptation stems from ignorance of the du Maurier novel and a simplistic interpretation of Hitchcock’s complex, nuanced remarks about the film’s production. He radically departed from the mediocre source to explore those themes of unstable identity, male anxiety and sexual repression, which also permeate The 39 Steps, Strangers on a Train, Vertigo and Marnie.  Rebecca, the character, is a synecdoche of Rebecca, the film.  She offered to play the part of a devoted wife to deceive Max’s family and friends; the film pretended to be a faithful adaptation to deceive Selznick, du Maurier, the critics, perhaps even Hitchcock himself.  While the newly arrived director can be identified with the nameless displaced feminine protagonist, Manderley and Monte Carlo symbolise the artificiality of Hollywood.  Mrs Van Hopper’s retort that “most girls would give their eyes for a chance to see Monte”, trumped by Max’s “Wouldn’t that rather defeat the purpose?”,  invites reflection on how many directors have given their eyes to work in Hollywood, only to have their personal purposes defeated.  In Hitchcock’s case, the motifs of artificiality and reality, blindness and sight, and defeated purpose resonate throughout his films.