Radio producer Wilfred De'Ath knows a lot more than he's saying about one of the UK's most famous female novelists. He says that she rarely sees anybody in her isolated home on a Cornish hilltop and that this is the first time that she's agreed to be filmed. But they embrace warmly because he'd already interviewed her several times on radio. One of his first questions is odd: are her powers failing? She scoffs at this. But only a year after this film was transmitted in 1971 she published her last novel, poorly received. Although du Maurier is dressed mannishly in a shirt, slacks, socks and boots, there's naturally no mention of her alleged affairs with women. But when the film was repeated on BBC4 (27.3.24) it accompanied the 2007 drama "Daphne" about du Maurier's affair with actress Gertrude Lawrence. (There's probably a coded reference in the documentary to pre-Great War gay life when she talks about men who took milk in their coffee as "effeminate.") The film is quite modern in style: du Maurier is filmed chatting as she hikes to the coast, or sits in the garden, or lounges around her home, and conversation sometimes overlaps. But it's now surprising that there's no archive. Her father, Gerald du Maurier, made films, but we don't see them. But we hear about him and the rest of her illustrious family (her grandfather, George du Maurier, wrote "Trilby) and she brings out her original typewritten MS of "Rebecca". There on the first line is "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again", which is a bit of a thrill. There are only passing references to her horror stories, today as well-known as her romances. But De'Ath is obsessed with "Rebecca" (there's a long recitation), and he appears uninterested in "The Birds", even though both films were directed by Hitchcock. Possibly to many, du Maurier, who died in 1989, is an enigma. This film is enlightening as much for what it leaves out as what it includes.
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