Rebecca is a 1940 American romantic psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It was Hitchcock's first American project, and his first film under contract with producer David O. Selznick. The screenplay by Robert E. Sherwood and Joan Harrison, and adaptation by Philip MacDonald and Michael Hogan, were based on the 1938 novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier. The film stars Laurence Olivier as the brooding, aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter and Joan Fontaine as the young woman who becomes his second wife, with Judith Anderson, George Sanders and Gladys Cooper in supporting roles. The film is a gothic tale shot in black-and-white. Maxim de Winter's first wife Rebecca, who died before the events of the film, is never seen. Her reputation and recollections of her, however, are a constant presence in the lives of Maxim, his new wife and the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers. Rebecca was theatrically released on April 12, 1940, to critical and commercial success. It received eleven nominations at the 13th Academy Awards, more than any other film that year. It won two awards; Best Picture, and Best Cinematography, becoming the only film directed by Hitchcock to win the former award. In 2018, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Plot Maxim de Winter stands at a cliff edge, seemingly contemplating jumping. A young woman shouts at him to stop him in his tracks, but he curtly asks her to walk on. Later, at Monte Carlo on the French Riviera, the same young woman is staying with her pompous old traveling companion, Mrs. Van Hopper. She again encounters the aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter, looking much more debonair. They are attracted to each other, and although Van Hopper tells her he is still obsessed with his dead wife, Rebecca, who we are told drowned in the sea near Manderley, she soon becomes the second Mrs. de Winter. Maxim takes his new bride back to Manderley, his grand mansion by the sea in southwestern England. It is dominated by its housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers. She is a chilly individual who had been a confidante of the first Mrs. de Winter, whose death she has not forgotten. She has even preserved Rebecca's grand bedroom suite unchanged, and displays various items that carry her monogram. Eventually, constant reminders of Rebecca's