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Created for my Queer Film and TV class last semester :)
The character of Mrs. Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1950 film, Rebecca, is an excellent example of how queer visibility manifested on-screen during the mid-1900s under the Production Code. While denotative depictions of queerness were prohibited, directors and producers could get away with implying that a side character was queer if they also condemned this part of their identity. One way this was done was by making the villains or antagonists in stories gay.
My goal for this project is to create a simple video essay highlighting one example of queer visibility during the Hayes Code era. While watching The Celluloid Closet during our screening, I took note of both Rebecca and Dracula’s Daughter. Both films feature lesbian villains though this fact is not spelled out explicitly in either film. Vito Russo writes, “gays as predatory, twilight creatures were a matter of style and personal interpretation in the horror films of the 1930s” (The Celluloid Closet p38). Unfortunately, this fed into the common narrative at the time that gay/lesbian people were evil.
Mrs. Danvers is supposed to be an off-putting character- this is alluded to through both her style and manner of speech and her long gazes and close following of Max’s new wife. A rather somber character most of the film, Mrs. Danvers only shows emotion and affection when talking about Rebecca. Mrs. Danvers’ obsession with Rebecca is met with confusion, disgust, and even fear from the other characters in the story. One scene in particular near the end of the film highlights this phenomenon when Mrs. Danvers takes the new girl on a tour of the late Mrs. De Winter’s room. By the end of the scene, the girl is crying in a mixture of fear, discomfort, and jealousy.
I didn’t put this in the video essay but I also believe that Rebecca and Mrs. Danvers had an affair for several reasons. For one, Rebecca visited a doctor near the end of her life under the name Mrs. Danvers- this could be coincidental but I believe it’s because they were in love. Also, Max himself reveals that he and Rebecca were never in love and that “love was a game to her, only a game.” Maybe heterosexual love to her was “only a game” because Rebecca was a lesbian.