Before we get into this, please be aware that it might get spoilerish in here.

Everyone at the seaside manor Manderly lives under the shadow of the dead Rebecca de Winter, which turns mousey little second Mrs. de Winter (Joan Fontaine) into even more of a mouse. Such a sad little creature, in fact, that she doesn’t even get to have a first name. Nor does she get to play tennis, because the “dashing” Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) tosses her racquet into the bushes and makes her go for a drive when they meet in Monte Carlo a few days before the the second-worst marriage proposal in film history. (The very worst was Rocky’s.)

I was never a fan of Maxim in Daphne de Maurier’s novel, and that feeling held fast when I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s film version of “Rebecca” on Friday night. Olivier’s portrayal of Maxim de Winter put me in mind of a mostly-less-violent Ike Turner. I can never quite tell whether de Winter is supposed to be an attractive lead or just a moody jerk.

Hitchcock’s hand in the 1940 Best Picture winner shows in the lighting, the moodiness and the proliferation of creepy creepers, chief among them the gliding, lingerie-obsessed Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) — she’s a thoroughly freaky study in weirdoism and psychological abuse — and the sleazy cheesy Jack Favell (George Sanders).

I think the moral of this story is never marry a wealthy recently widowed dude with a pencil-thin mustache. He’s bound to have baggage.