Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Some directors create characters for us who are singular film entities. They have very firm identities, they're certain in who they are, they have well-defined idiosyncrasies - if they're well-created, we may strive to be like them. The protagonists of Alfred Hitchcock movies are usually the opposite - they're defined by a few loose items. They could be anyone. That's the Hitchcock trick - once the viewer realizes that the person on screen could just as well be them, Hitchcock has done his job; he's in your head, and he's not leaving for a good long while.
Hitchcock's triumph in this film is making the most vital, interesting character in the story never appear on screen - she's already dead when the film begins. Yet she looms over both our main characters, especially Joan Fontaine as the recently betrothed. Fontaine is perfect as the anxious, eager-to-please newlywed - she is trying to live up to a person she never knew.
Naturally this is the only movie Hitchcock won an Oscar for, as it's about wealthy English people. Did Oscar bait exist in 1940?
The following year, a movie about a Welsh family would beat out Kane, and the year after that a movie about a London woman would beat out Magnificent Ambersons.
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