The film was a common trope of movies at the time. A rich titled widower, away on vacation, falls in love with and marries a young girl. After the vacation, they return to his castle-esque home where his wife died… and it only makes him sad.
The new wife is told that his dead wife was a virtuous saint, someone to whom she could never live up to. She is told this by the wife’s best friend, who runs a school for girls. The new wife seems to be terrorised by the ghostly movements of things around her house that are almost enough to make her mad.
The Spoiler is… that it was the first wife’s best friend who was doing all of this… that the best friend and the wife were secret lovers and that the wife and her best friend would bed all of the husbands friends, business partners, and rivals when he was out of town (at parliament?). In the end, the mansion catches fire and burns to the ground with the dead wife’s best friend laughing maniacally inside.
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I should know the name of this movie, but I can’t think of it. George Sanders might have had a bit roll as one of the business partners who bedded and was blackmailed by the first wife.
Rebecca was my immediate thought and I was so desperate to post first I didn’t slow down enough to put Rebecca in bold or add the elitist ‘from the book’ to underline how erudite I am. At least, how erudite I would like to be perceived as.
Some of the details don’t match, though. Well, a lot of them. That’s probably why you couldn’t recall it! I wonder which movie you’re conflating it with?
Yeah, that middle bit about having lots of lovers is odd, but the ending can only be Rebecca.
Great novel by Daphne Du Maurier, who for some reason has often been pegged as a romantic novelist when her books are actually really bloody dark. Heck, she also wrote Don’t Look Now.
I must have mis-remembered the George Sanders role ( I’m sorry). The reason this all came up was that I was trying to remember the actress who played the school mistress. I can picture her in my head: jet black hair, done up high. A condescending expression on her overly pale face. She played evil murderous women in a few movies and she did it so well that she could literally haunt your nightmares. I couldn’t bring her up just by searching “Evil Actresses” ( Siri got confused and said “You mean there are good ones!? May I read you some nice Vogon poetry instead?”).
Rebecca was the foothold I needed. The actress was Judith Anderson.
In Rebecca, Mrs. Danvers was the sinister housekeeper. She wasn’t the first wife’s best friend, she was her personal maid. She had a crush on the first wife and lived vicariously through her shennanigans with other men, and was devastated when the first wife died (was murdered? I think it was suicide.)… 1) There was no school for girls and the housekeeper didn’t have anything to do with the first wife’s men friends. 2) I don’t remember any ghostly movements around the house, just a crushing feeling of dread and haunting (the new wife felt terribly inferior, and in fact was married by Max, the man of the house, and treated much like a pet dog.). These last two things are not part of Rebecca. (and yes, George Sanders in the movie was the cousin of the dead first wife, I think, who briefly visited the newlywed wife - I think he was one of Rebecca’s lovers.)
Maybe you’re conflating Rebecca with The Uninvited. It was from the same time period as Rebecca. The Uninvited had an icy bitch of a schoolmistress who had been friends with a dead woman who had lived in the spooky house, and she might have had a crush on her, too. There were plenty of ghostly doings around the house, as well.
SPOILER!! Do not read if you plan to watch any of the film versions or read the book.
In the book it was murder-- Maxim shot Rebecca. In the Hitchcock movie, it was an accident. Rebecca and Maxim were having an argument and Rebecca tripped and hit her head. The inquest verdict was suicide both in the book and the movie, and this wasn’t correct, but in each case it got Maxim off the hook for murder.
BTW, this is one of the times when I think the movie (the Hitchcock version) was an improvement on the book. The movie tightened up the plot and eliminated some extraneous characters, including one too many dogs. Rebecca won Best film of 1940. All later TV versions-- pretty worthless IMHO.
The Uninvited is another movie I’ve watched probably 50 times. If you mean the 1944 version with Ray Milland, your description isn’t even close. For one thing, there’s no schoolmistress. You must be thinking of something else. This is the basic setup:
A brother and sister move into an old seaside house they find abandoned for many years on the English coast. Their original enchantment with the house diminishes as they hear stories of the previous owners and meet their daughter (now a young woman) who now lives as a neighbor with her grandfather. Also heard are unexplained sounds during the night. It becomes obvious that the house is haunted. The reasons for the haunting and how they relate to the daughter whom the brother is falling in love with, prove to be a complex mystery. As they are compelled to solve it, the supernatural activity at the house increases to a frightening level. —Russell West ruswest@primenet.com
You’re right, she wasn’t a schoolmistress. She was head of a sanatorium - I was misremembering. She still had a creepy vibe similar to Miss Danver’s, however.
You are absolutely correct on that one! Miss Holloway was played by Cornelia Otis Skinner. Very much a Mrs. Danvers vibe. Yeah, she had been in love with the dead woman. I adore that movie and it’s one of my go-to “comfort” films, along with Rebecca. It gave us the beautiful song, Stella by Starlight (skip to 0:26).
SPOILER!!
Turns out there are two ghosts haunting Windward House. The one Stella thinks is her mother is not-- it’s the other ghost, the mistress of her dad. Very racy conclusion for this time.
I conflated the two. It was Rebecca. It’s just that I remember it being so much older of a film… maybe 3 years into ‘talkies’. I actually searched to see if either film was a remake from late 20’s /early 30s… but no… both were the earliest versions made. Memories play tricks.
Anyway, you’ve answered all I needed so thank you.
