Why He Felt the Way He Did
VI. Cigarette in the Cream
One key moment to understanding authorship in Rebecca lasts not even two seconds. It occurs near the beginning of the film, when “I” is employed by Mrs. Van Hopper (Florence Bates) as a paid companion. While in Monte Carlo, “I” is courted by Maxim unbeknownst to Mrs. Van Hopper, who spends her days sick in bed. One day, after an outing with Maxim, “I” returns to Mrs. Van Hopper’s bedside. She believes that “I” has spent her days playing tennis, and says that the tennis pro must be teaching her things “other than tennis.” She then takes her cigarette and puts it out in a jar of cleansing cream on her bedside table. When she does so, the camera cuts to a close-up of the cigarette going into the jar. (Watch the clip on the top right.)
A similar moment occurs in Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief (1956). The film stars Cary Grant as John Robie, a retired jewel thief. After a string of robberies along the French Riviera, Robie becomes the chief suspect, and is forced to help catch the real thief to prove his innocence. While doing so, he strikes up a friendship with an insurance salesman, who attempts to convince one of his clients to lock her jewelry away rather than keep them in her hotel room. During one such scene, the jewel owner walks across the room and places her cigarette out on a plate of eggs. (Watch the clip on the bottom right.)
The aforementioned scene in To Catch a Thief was part of Hitchcock’s long-standing battle against eggs, which, as he told Peter Bogdanovich, he hated. In his invaluable work Hitchcock’s Motifs, Michael Walker labels this moment as “one of the director’s most famous ‘repellent’ moments.” Here, Hitchcock is using humor and a close-up to indicate his own personal preference and taste. While an altogether unserious and unimportant moment, it shows a certain style and personality that is an element of the auteurship. As Walker notes, a hatred of eggs runs throughout ‘Hitchcock.’ Combined with the understated humor Hitchcock valued and used throughout his work, the cigarette and the egg becomes a key Hitchcockian moment.
It becomes clear that the genesis of the moment from To Catch a Thief was born in Rebecca. Viewers of Hitchcock unfamiliar with du Maurier’s novel may have assumed that Mrs. Van Hopper’s action was of Hitchcock’s own creation. But, in fact, it is taken from the novel: “‘The trouble is with me laid up like this you haven’t got enough to do,’ she said, mashing her cigarette in a jar of cleansing cream, and taking the cards in her hand she mixed them in the deft, irritating shuffle of the inveterate player, shaking them in threes, snapping the backs (du Maurier, 2006).” This moment becomes even more interesting when one learns that it was actually Selznick who instructed Hitchcock to add this exact moment to the film. In a memo I reviewed at the Selznick Archive, Barbara Keon wrote to Hitchcock on behalf of her boss Selznick, who “asked me to call to your attention the following bits of business, etc., from the novel, which might be of value in characterization of Mrs. van Hopper.” The memo went on:Here, one sees a perfect example of the way in which Selznick exercised his authorship over Hitchcock, by instructing him to take even the most tiny of moments from the novel and use it in the film. However, it is important to note that Selznick’s memo suggests that Hitchcock pan over the the bedside table as Mrs. Van Hopper puts out her cigarette in the cream, while in the film Hitchcock opts for a close-up. Hitchcock’s decision to use a close-up is an assertion of his auteurship, reflecting his own style and preference for understated humor — the camera stays on the cream for less than two seconds; rather than shove the joke in our faces, Hitchcock cuts away before we even have a chance to laugh. That the moment is replicated later in To Catch a Thief only bolsters its importance in relation to auteurship.Mr. Selznick feels it might be worth while (sic) in one of Mrs. van Hopper’s scenes to try to devise the section so that we get a close look at the disorder described in these pages, even if it means Mrs. van Hopper putting out her cigarette in some cold-cream or etc., and panning over her very messy bedside table as we do (Selznick, 1940).
Moments like these are essential to understanding Hitchcock because they contextualize his auteurship by examining its relation to other authors. As Wollen noted, the definition of auteur theory is broad and varied. This means the auteur is often portrayed as a figure cloaked in mystery, leaving us clues to decode and decipher. While this may sometimes be true, auteurs are more so offering their version of the world(s) they interpret. Auteurs do not act alone, and it would be counterproductive to examine their work without understanding the battles between authors that go into the making of a film, especially in classical Hollywood. For, I would argue, that it is this conversation between authors — novelists, producers, screenwriters, directors, et al. — that gives birth to auteurship. Competing visions and sensibilities breed creativity and innovation. The auteurs are the directors who do precisely that, no matter how great claims to authorship by others may be. This is what Hitchcock does in Rebecca.