Rebecca (1940)

*Spoiler warning*

Hitchcock's adapatation of Daphne du Maurier's romantic thriller, about the second Mrs de Winter struggling to live up to the image of the first glamorous socialite one, provides neat last minute outs for an abuser and body tamperer and literally concludes, "She was asking for it," but is thoroughly enjoyable and full of memorable moments, like the dreamy approach to Manderley, the amusing courtship that happens behind the back of  Edythe van Hopper, and that fiery ending.

★★★★★

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The Birds (1963)

Alfred Hitchcock's third Daphne du Maurier adaptation is her short story about birds attacking the residents of du Maurier's hometown of Cornwall, except the Master of Suspense transfers everything to San Francisco and extrapolates the bare context of the novella into a slow burn psychological drama featuring a Paris Hilton-type socialite with nothing better to do than to pull elaborate practical jokes on a potential new beau, but she has the ice cool smile wiped from her face when she finds herself trapped with him, his mother, his ex, his niece and his Oedipal complex in Bodega Bay, a small town under attack from even more unsettled birds!

★★★★★

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The Scapegoat (1959)

Daphne du Maurier can carry off an unlikely plot like that of The Scapegoat (a man finds himself thrust into the family life of his doppelgänger) but this 1959 movie can't, especially with Alec Guinness playing so wet a lead character that the film's entirety is infected with his dreariness; rather than a suspense thriller that ratchets up tension, this plodding movie is a cartoony melodrama sans the complexities of du Maurier's plot, full of holes and unanswered questions.

★★☆☆☆

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My Cousin Rachel (2017)

The trouble with Daphne du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel, whether this very beautifully photographed and finely acted new version, the 1952 Olivia de Havilland version, or any version at all is that viewers are supposed to question the motivations of a foreign woman and ask themselves whether she is a loose opportunist, while extending sympathy towards an immature, impestuous privacy invader, domestic abuser and effective murderer.

★★★☆☆

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My Cousin Rachel (1952)

A sumptuous adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's gothic romance, but Phillip, who suspects his 'cousin' Rachel conspired first against his late Uncle Ambrose and now against him for the family's Cornwall estate, is portrayed by Richard Burton as such a dunderhead - insipid, delusional, violent, naive, and let's face it, a likely xenophobe - that from the word go modern viewers' sympathies rest not with him but with the possibly conniving, possibly murderous Rachel.

★★★☆☆

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