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Lily James and Armie Hammer in "Rebecca": On the Abyss between Sex and Cleanliness
Photo: Kerry Brown / Netflix
For centuries, alchemists have practiced making gold from scrap or jewels from rubble.
British director Ben Wheatley now shows that reverse transformation work is also an art.
His film "Rebecca" enchants the material of a brilliant novel and a dazzling movie classic into a cheap, screamingly colorful kitsch product.
In spite of this, or perhaps because of that, there are not so few amazing, enjoyable moments in Wheatley's film.
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Lily James in "Rebecca": Sweet Class War Skit
Photo: Kerry Brown / AP
The melodrama "Rebecca", with which Alfred Hitchcock won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1940, is a dark psychological thriller.
In the very first scene, Joan Fontaine, a penniless young lady of a British lady in Monte Carlo, catches a man gazing down from a rocky promontory into the Mediterranean Sea with apparently suicidal intent - it is Laurence Olivier in the role of the rich gentleman de winter.
The heroine screams and scares the man on the edge.
As later became very clear, she feels called to be a savior.
As the second Mrs. de Winter, she will follow her husband to England on his estate Manderlay, stand by him despite a murder charge, and find out how de Winter's first wife Rebecca really came to death.
The film that director Wheatley is now presenting on Netflix is, like Hitchcock's work based on the creepy hit novel by Daphne Du Maurier from 1938, set in Monte Carlo and on the fictional Manderlay estate.
But even the first encounter between the heroine played by Lily James and the wealthy nobleman de Winter (Armie Hammer) is not a life and death action scene, but a sweet class war skit.
In the dining room of a Monegasque luxury hotel, the noble Mr. de Winter comes to the aid of the inexperienced young woman in a dispute with an arrogant waiter - and a little later he has the first oysters of her life served on the breakfast terrace.
The actress Lily James is known for her appearances in "Baby Driver" (2017) and "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again" (2017);
here she is not a savior, but a Cinderella who suddenly becomes a princess and looks up at her prince with a hearty glow in her eyes.
Allegedly, the hero has a dark secret.
But amazingly, Ben Wheatley's "Rebecca" version often looks like one of those TV romances that ZDF broadcasts on Sunday evening.
Armie Hammers country gentleman de Winter shows a remarkable preference for mustard-colored suits.
Lily James, as a young woman from the common people, wears modest blouses and summer dresses and always has a shy smile on her face.
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Kristin Scott Thomas as housekeeper: Making life a little difficult for the mistress
Photo: Kerry Brown / AP
"Rebecca" takes place between the First and Second World War, and the sunny days by the sea are followed by a frosty reception in the magnificent building in Manderlay.
Here the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers runs the regiment.
Once at Hitchcock, the actress Judith Anderson was allowed to look poisonous, here the lovely Kristin Scott Thomas purses her lips to make life a little difficult for the new mistress.
Actor Sam Riley, who plays the cousin of the dead Rebecca and actually looks almost as nutcracker as George Sanders, who played the treacherous cousin at Hitchcock, is really angry.
In both the old and the new film, it is this villain whose talk gives the astonished heroine an insight into the devil's power of unrestrained sexuality.
Succulent work instead of tough thrillers
In Hitchcock's melodrama, it is the malice of the outside world and the investigation of the judiciary that weld the young landlady and her husband together.
In Wheatley's "Rebecca" version, it seems to be the chaste cleanliness of their relationship that inspires the two for each other.
Presumably the de Winters never take off their pajamas even in the marriage bed.
The director Wheatley is British and has so far produced the tough horror thriller "Kill List" (2011) and the no less violent action film "Free Fire" (2016).
There should be a lot of humorless people who see his "Rebecca" as the mess of a classic.
A beautiful Talmi glitter arises from the splendor of the furnishings and the cheerful atmosphere, in which Lily Allen is chauffeured like a young Grace Kelly over the steep coastal roads of Monaco and triumphs over her unruly staff in the gray castle walls.
Director Hitchcock would probably have liked Wheatley's sugary creation.
After all, he once claimed: "For me, cinema is not a piece of life, but a piece of cake."
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