This episode is better than the second, if only because we do see our heroine starting to come into a little confidence, not that Mrs. Danvers is going to let that happen. This episode features the story’s most iconic scene, that of Mrs. Danvers urging the second Mrs. De Winter to leap to her death from a high window. It’s kind of the emotional heart of the story to me and, unfortunately, this adaptation whiffs it. They attempt tomake it artsy, so the moment, which should be played with the two actresses, a window and a ton of fog, gets turned into a weird montage that incorporates flashbacks from the other episodes, random images of like flowers and stuff and surreal dreamlike images of the other characters. It’s overly done and cheesy and robs the scene of its power. But it’s got a great cliffhanger with Brett’s Max finally revealing the truth about Rebecca’s death and this adaptation is able to keep the original story from the book (Hitchcock was forced to change this particular detail when he made his film). It’s here that we really see how much better Brett is than Olivier. Olivier never seemed like a man capable of murder; Brett does. A good ending, basically a decent episode that unfortunately screws up the most important moment. 2 ½ stars.
tl;dr – a basically decent episode with a good cliffhanger; unfortunately the show gets artsy and cheesy with the episode’s most significant scene and brings the rating down considerably. 2 ½ stars.