That film is Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca. It's a ghost story, of sorts, but only because Rebecca is dead, and everyone else in the film is haunted by her memory. It's not a good memory. Not for most, anyway. Meet Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier). Wealthy, educated, cultured, from good old English stock. He's visiting the south of France, a lovely place. He's also about to kill himself. Kind of reminds one of "Richard Cory." Anyway, a young woman (Joan Fontaine) stops him from leaping from a cliff. He's rude to her. Later he apologizes. They spend time together. She starts to fall in love with him, even though she knows he's way above her social standing. He asks her to marry him in an off-handed way and she accepts. Don't you just love whirlwind romances. Everything is roses until Maxim takes his new 
bride back to his ancestral pile of bricks and mortar, Mandalay. It's a creepy, shadowy, Gothic travesty with vast rooms and soaring ceilings. It's haunted too. The maid, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), keeps the ghost of Rebecca alive. Rebecca's name is repeated over and over through the film, like a mantra. "Those belonged to Rebecca...Rebecca always wrote her letters in here...That's Rebecca's room...Tell me about Rebecca...." Often she's referred to as Mrs. de Winter, even though it's obvious that there's now a new Mrs. de Winter, and - Oh, look! - she's standing right here. The new Mrs. de Winter is overwhelmed by the house, by Mrs. Danvers, by Rebecca.
Mrs. de Winter wants to put on a ball at the house. Mrs. Danvers tricks her into wearing the
same costume Rebecca wore at her last ball before she drowned in a boating accident. Maxim is furious when he sees her. She runs into Rebecca's room, which Mrs. Danvers has kept exactly the way it was before Rebecca's death. The room is a shrine. Mrs. Danvers tries to get Mrs. de Winter to take her own life. She almost does it too. But a flare fired out at sea breaks the spell. A ship has hit the rocks. All hands rush to the beach. Mrs. Danvers learns that divers, sent down to examine the hull of the stricken ship, have discovered Rebecca's sail boat. Rebecca's still in it. Maxim then tells his new wife the story of his previous wife, how she cuckolded him with just about everyone she could find. One night, in her private cottage, she told him she was pregnant 
and that the child wasn't his. She laughed at him. He struck her. She fell. She didn't get up. He put her body in the sail boat, went out to sea and scuttled it. Now there has to be an inquest, and all of it will come to light. Enter Jack Favell (George Sanders). He's Rebecca's favorite cousin. He's a car salesman who's getting tired of selling cars he can't afford to own. He'd like to move up in the world. From the things he says to the new Mrs. de Winter, you get the feeling that he and Rebecca were a little closer than cousins. More like kissing cousins. Favell makes threats. He has information about the accident. He'll tell, unless.... Well, you can guess.
Rebecca is a fascinating movie for many reasons. Adapted from the novel by Daphne de Maurier, the film explores female sexuality at a time before such things were discussed in polite society. Mrs. Danvers says, "Love was a game to [Rebecca]." Love, here, is a Hollywood euphemism for sex. It is hinted, though never stated, that Rebecca was having a lot of it with a lot of people, including Favell. Maybe even Mrs. Danvers. She's obsessed with the memory of Rebecca. She touches her belongings with gentle hands, like a lover's caress. Lesbianism - like homosexuality - was never shown back in the day. It was only inferred. Rebecca infers a lot. The movie was filmed in glorious black and white on the same stretch of California coastline where The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was filmed six years later. It's a gorgeously haunting area, perfectly suited to ghost stories. This is one of the best you'll ever see, although you won't ever see the ghost. And you won't ever learn Mrs. de Winter's real name. Cuz, in the end, the film keeps its secrets to itself.
Rebecca is rated G.
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