The film begins in Monte Carlo, where society dowager Mrs. Van Hopper (Florence Bates) is vacationing with her paid companion (Joan Fontaine). When the grieving widow Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) meets the young companion, he begins to court her, and within a few weeks they have fallen in love and married. Maxim takes the second Mrs. de Winter (she is never referred to by any other name) back to his palatial estate, Manderley, which is overseen by the icy housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson).
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| Joan Fontaine and Florence Bates |
Although she has been dead for a year, Maxim's first wife Rebecca's presence is everywhere. He monogram is on nearly every item in the house, and Mrs. Danvers has preserved her bedroom and study as a sort of shrine. Overwhelmed by her position as mistress of the estate, the second Mrs. De Winter begins to doubt her husband's love for her, convinced that he still deeply loves Rebecca. Mrs. Danvers, for her part, adds fuel to those doubts by constantly talking about how beautiful, smart, and beloved Rebecca was.
Wanting to make her husband happy, the second Mrs. de Winter hosts a costume ball. She decides to design her own costume and surprise Maxim with it. Mrs. Danvers suggests she copy a gown worn by one of Maxim's ancestors in a portrait that hangs at Manderley. This is indeed what the second Mrs. de Winter does, but when she makes her appearance at the ball, everyone is mortified: it's the same costume Rebecca had worn at the previous year's ball. She confronts Mrs. Danvers who tells her she'll never be able to take Rebecca's place, and nearly convinces her to leap to her death. But in that moment, a flare signals that a ship has hit the rocks, and everyone's attention is diverted to that situation.
During the rescue, another boat is discovered at the bottom of the sea: the sailboat Rebecca was on when she drowned. And, despite Maxim having identified and buried another body in the family cemetery, Rebecca's body is also found on the boat.
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| Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, and Judith Anderson |
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| Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier |
put her body on board the boat and scuttled it.
The ensuing investigation points to the idea that Rebecca had committed suicide by sabatoging her own boat. But when the father of the child she'd been carrying, Jack Favell (George Sanders) produces a note written by Rebecca that dispels that notion, with which he attempts to blackmail Maxim. Maxim notifies the police, and he is accused of murdering Rebecca. Favell reveals that Rebecca had been seeing a doctor in London during her pregnancy. When the doctor is interviewed, the full truth finally comes out: Rebecca was not in fact pregnant, but suffering from a late-stage cancer, with a prognosis of only months to live. Her confrontation with Maxim had been an attempt to get him to murder her, as a passive form of suicide.
When the investigation is finally concluded, Maxim returns to Manderley, only to see it engulfed in flames. The deranged Mrs. Danvers would rather see Manderely destroyed than to see Maxim and his wife happy there, so she burnt it to the ground. The second Mrs. de Winter escapes the inferno, but Mrs. Danvers does not. Although Manderley is forever gone, it is presumed that the de Winters lived happily ever after.
