Rebecca

The novel’s crime could not reach the screen intact. The Production Code office rejected the first script and left two ways out: punish Maxim, or rewrite Rebecca’s death as an accident. The accident was Hitchcock’s own proposal, not the office’s, and the producer David O. Selznick complained that a story about a man who murdered his wife had become one about a man who buried a wife killed by accident. The office also required that nothing be suggested between Mrs Danvers and Rebecca. Joan Fontaine, cast as the woman the film never names, was announced three days before shooting. Alfred Hitchcock tried to edit in camera so the producer would have less to re-cut. Selznick wanted the smoke over the burning Manderley to write a huge R across the sky; Hitchcock burned a monogrammed case on a pillow instead. The 13th Academy Awards brought 11 nominations and two wins rather than one: Outstanding Production, the name Best Picture carried then, and Black-and-White Cinematography for George Barnes. Hitchcock lost Directing, and two of that year’s Best Picture nominees were his. A good fit if you take the gap between the R in the smoke and the case on the pillow as the film itself. Not for anyone waiting to see how the book’s death happens; the censors offered punishment or accident.