Assignment With detailed reference to a film and/or stage production adapted from a written text (novel or play), discuss the interactions between director, writer and the original text. Response A film adaptation of Du Maurier's "Rebecca," held undoubtedly high expectations. Already accountable to a "vast potential audience" surmounted from successes as novel, radio drama, and stage production, there was no doubt in producer Selznick's mind that a film adaptation must remain faithful to the original, "my ego is not so great that it cannot be held in check on the adaptation of a successful work." However, a faithful adaptation "assumes an affective relationship between creative artist and receptive audience 3, one which had already been carved out for Selznick who sought the same relationship with his spectators as Du Maurier held with her readers. The difficultly lay in the translation; ˜between the percept of the visual image and the concept of the mental image lies the root difference between the two media'4. Only by first understanding the mental image shared by its readers could Rebecca be translated to visual image with the same effect. Interactions between the filmmakers and Du Maurier's original were therefore vital in Rebecca's translation, for even the virtuosity of innovative auteur Alfred Hitchcock could not satisfy such expectant viewers with mere artistry. Rebecca, marketed as a woman's gothic novel, was primarily intended for a female audience. Its success, Selznick believed, was owed to the relatability of the unnamed protagonist; ˜[Every] little thing that the girl does [ ¦] that indicate her nervousness and her self-consciousness [ ¦] are all so brilliant in the book that every woman who had read it has adored the girl and has understood her psychology'5. It became Selznick's primary concern to ensure his presentation of the narrator gave the same effect as she had in text. To understand reader's identification with the heroine, I draw upon the Neo-Freudian theory of the ˜Electra Complex [ ¦] a child's psychosexual competition with her mother for the possession of her father'6. The application of this theory sees Rebecca as the mother and ˜I' the child competing for Maxim as the male object of desire. ˜I''s childlike disposition is presented by Du Maurier through the nature of the narrative; ˜Would we never be together, he a man and I a woman, standing shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, with no gulf between us? I did not want to be a child. I wanted to be his wife,'7 female readers empathise with the endeari