1940 – Judith Anderson
Rebecca
This was a truly remarkable performance. Judith Anderson was perfectly cast as the villain Mrs. Danvers. In this psychological thriller, she is a creepy character, who actually doesn’t commit any crime until the end of the movie, where she burns a mansion down, and intentionally stays to die in the fire. On the one hand, she is mentally unstable, and on the other hand, she is very cold and calculating. She has a lack of morals, but, if you look at what she does in the movie, she didn’t break any laws or commit any actual crimes.
She is actually a pretty complex character on the surface, but a simply motivated one at her core. She was the housekeeper of the estate, and Rebecca’s personal maid when she had been alive. Mrs. Danvers had become disturbingly obsessed with her employer, with an obsession that absolutely crossed the line into utter adoration and intense sexual attraction. From her first appearance on the screen, where she is introduced to the Second Mrs. de Winter, it is clear that she disapproves of her, because she is not Rebecca.
She treats her new mistress coldly and with open distain. There are two scenes in particular which stood out to me as phenomenal. The first is the one where she is showing off Rebecca’s bedroom to the Second Mrs. de Winter. She is truly creepy in how she shows off Rebecca’s fur coat, then her underwear drawer, and then her see-through nightgown. This is the scene where her strong sexual desire for Rebecca was clearly stated without ever actually being stated. When showing off the nightgown, she says, “Look. You can see my hand right through it,” implying that she used to love seeing Rebecca’s naked body when she had worn it.
The other scene that she was amazing in was the one in which she tries to convince Maxim’s new wife to commit suicide. She first manipulates her into upsetting Maxim, and then, when she is in tears, she invites her over to the open window and whispers in her ear, calmly suggesting that she has nothing to live for. Maxim doesn’t really love you. How could he? It would be easy to just let go and die. It would be best if you did. Wow. Anderson played such a convincing villain!