M. de Winter @gabrielle2025 - Tumblr Blog

Gloria Swanson & William Holden | Sunset Blvd.

How Rebecca de Winter looked like?

In chapter 20, maxim said "She looked very pale, very thin. She began walking up and down the room, her hands in the pockets of her trousers. She looked like a boy in her sailing kit, a boy with a face like a Botticelli angel." Mrs danvers said she was tall, slim, had dark hair. Rebecca looking like an angel explains why so many didn't suspect of her and couldn't think she could be an unfaithful wife. They would feel unlarmed by her, because she not only behaved like an angel but looked like one. I think that french actress Isabelle Adjani could have played rebecca in the 1970's. Perhaps, Greta Garbo in the 1920's or Hedy Lammar during the 1940's.

#daphne du maurier #rebecca 1938 #rebecca de winter #maxim de winter #mrs danvers #rebeccabook #rebecca 1940 #books #books and reading

Was exile the true punishment in "Rebecca"?

I’ve been thinking about the ending of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and how it's often read as a twisted kind of justice—not through courts or confession, but through slow, quiet exile. Manderley burns. Maxim and the second Mrs. de Winter vanish from society, drifting from hotel to hotel, living in anonymity and silence. And I can’t help but see this as their punishment—not legal, but deeply psychological.Maxim escapes prison, but not guilt. He’s lost everything that gave him power, pride, and identity. He’s a shell of a man, and his only companion is the woman who now knows the truth about him.But what struck me most on this reread is her fate. The second Mrs. de Winter didn't commit the crime, but she’s punished in her own way. She chooses to stay loyal to a murderer. She becomes complicit in the silence. She loses her innocence, her home, and even her sense of self. The girl who once romanticized Manderley now drifts across Europe with a haunted man, in a relationship defined more by trauma than love.

#rebeccabook #rebecca 1938 #daphne du maurier #books #classic literature

summertimenoir

Flesh And The Devil (1926) - directed by Clarence Brown

queer-cinephile

30 Days of Classic Queer Hollywood

Day 27: Greta Garbo (1905 - 1990)

"We cannot help our nature, as God has created it. But I have always thought you and I belonged together." - Garbo to her friend Mimi Pollak

Greta Garbo was a Swedish-American actress who had great success in Hollywood during its silent and early golden eras. She was thrice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Garbo was a bisexual woman. She never married and bore no children. She has been romantically linked with lesbian writer Mercedes de Acosta and actresses Lilyan Tashman and Louise Brooks. Personal letters reveal that Garbo harbored feelings for her friend, actress Mimi Pollak, for many years.

Garbo is known for her performances in films such as Flesh and the Devil (1926), A Woman of Affairs (1928), Queen Christina (1933), and Ninotchka (1939). In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo fifth on its list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood.

bala5

Greta Garbo liked men's clothes by Mercedes de Acosta photographed her in California (1930's)

allgarbo

Once Salka introduced Mercedes to Garbo in July 1931, Garbo initially fell for this aristocrat, with her tales of famous friends, knowledge of Eastern religions, and skill at sex. After finishing Susan Lenox that summer, Garbo took Mercedes to a cabin on an island in a lake in the High Sierras, where they swam, caught fish, talked, and began an affair. Mercedes was known for her sexual skill and Garbo for “the unbounded freedom of her life.”

After her trip to the High Sierras with Mercedes, Garbo displayed deep feelings for Salka, which suggests that the Sierra trip was a failure, that she was comparing Salka and Mercedes as friends and lovers, or that she was forming a triangle with the two of them. On September 18, which was Garbo’s birthday, she seduced Salka, who described what happened in a letter to Berthold—her confidante as well as her husband. Greta decorated her house with white gardenias, a symbol of femininity and of secret love. She served Champagne and played Sapphic songs on the gramophone. It was, according to Salka, “a gigantic temptation apparatus.” She concluded: “So we were together—it was harmonious and beautiful.” (Ideal Beauty: The Life and Times of Greta Garbo)

GRETA GARBO & SALKA VIERTEL in — Anna Christie (1930) dir. Jacques Feyder

In chapter 20, maxim said during his confession that rebecca looked like a boy in her sailing kit, a boy with a Botticelli angel face. I have always imagined Greta Garbo in the 1920's as the perfect actress to play Rebecca de Winter. She looked angelic but sensuous and etheral as well, like she belonged in a painting.

#daphne du maurier #rebecca 1938 #rebeccabook #rebecca de winter #greta garbo

In Daphne du Maurier's novel, Mrs. Danvers is totally in love with Rebecca. She is not just devoted, but obsessed in a way that feels deeply erotic. When she shows the narrator Rebecca’s bedroom, it’s like she’s inviting her into a sacred, sexual space. She doesn’t just talk about Rebecca’s nightgown — she fetishizes it. The way she caresses the fabric, urges the narrator to feel it, almost like she’s imagining touching Rebecca’s actual skin. It’s like the objects — the brush, the slippers, the scent still in the room — become stand-ins for Rebecca’s body. It doesn't look like maternal or fraternal love at all, but very sexual. Danvers has preserved the room like a shrine, but more than that, like a lover who can’t let go. Her language is intimate, physical, almost like she wants to consume Rebecca, possess her completely. She doesn’t just miss her; she longs for her. The narrator being in that space is almost a violation for Danvers, like someone walking in on her fantasies. It’s not just grief. It’s desire, unspoken, repressed.

#rebecca 1938 #rebecca daphne du maurier #daphne du maurier #mrs danvers #sapphic #queer #queer characters #rebecca das musical #rebecca 1940 #literature #books

I’m rereading Rebecca (1938) by Daphne du Maurier, and I didn't pay attention to the poetry book detail before. In Chapter Four, the narrator discovers that Maxim’s poetry book was a gift from Rebecca. But at that point in the story, Maxim is in Monte Carlo. He wouldn’t have brought his car all the way from Manderley to another country—he would’ve rented one there. So, if he had the book with him, it means he deliberately brought it from home. Maxim is full of contradictions. Why bringing Rebecca’s gift with him if he hates and wants to forget her? Why going to Montecarlo, to the same hotel they spend their honeymoon in ?

#rebecca de winter #daphne du maurier #maxim de winter #rebecca 1938

worthyinsigniacolon-deactivated

flagbridge

Full high quality scans of the 1881 in universe newspapers that were dropped at 6 newsstands in Manhattan this morning. Thanks IG user elissa_rizzo for both quickly snagging and sharing with everyone!

Note the two Le Monde Nouveau from 1880 and 1881 were not dropped. Looks like the front and back are different but the inside are the same which explains some of the timeline wonkiness.