On the cover of Michael Walker’s Hitchcock’s Motifs is an image that is the quintessence of Hitchcock. It is the aforementioned photo from To Catch a Thief of Gracy Kelly and Cary Grant sitting in a car, enjoying a picnic basket full of chicken. The best way to get the full effect is to watch (right).

As Walker notes in Hitchcock’s Motifs, the moment is more than just “adolescent sexual innuendo” (Walker, 2005). He writes, “food and sex are linked in Hitchcock in a manner typical of his films: to suggest tensions, hostility, fears of inadequacy. His hungry women tend to remain hungry, his neurotic men to find fault.” The relationship he describes is the “I”- Maxim relationship. In Monte Carlo, “I” feels out of place and inadequate. How can she please Maxim de Winter, the dark, mysterious, aristocrat? Eventually, throughout the film, that question will become, how can she replace Rebecca? Throughout the film, it is her hunger to answer those questions that keeps her going. Maxim too, is hungry and, as Walker notes, neurotic. He longs to rid himself of his memories of Rebecca; to move on. This helps us understand why Hitchcock would have wanted to insert such a chicken eating scene into Rebecca. More importantly, it is a moment that, if it were included in the film, would be indicative of Hitchcock’s style and sensibility; perhaps it would have been on the cover of Walker’s book.

Why this moment was removed from Rebecca we may never know. The most likely reason, to my mind, is because it was too sexual. Because Selznick wanted “I” to be the insecure, child-like woman of du Maurier’s novel, the sexual innuendo of the chicken eating would have been uncharacteristic. Thus, we see another example of Selznick, by way of Sherwood, asserting his authorship over Hitchcock; forcing Hitchcock to remove this Hitchcockian scene from the film. Hitchcock, however, did in fact get the last laugh: the moment does, for a few seconds, appear in Rebecca.