Tonight on TV: This movie is more than 80 years old, but it remains one of the most captivating ever made.

By the late 1930s, British film director Alfred Hitchcock enjoyed a certain reputation among American audiences, and producer David O. Selznick invited him to come and continue his career in Hollywood.

For his first American film, made in 1940, Hitchcock chose to adapt his compatriot Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca, the story of Mrs. de Winter who discovers the Manderley mansion owned by her husband, whose ex-wife is still in sight. To rest on the walls…

Despite his tumultuous collaboration with David O. Due to completely different artistic approaches to Selznick, the master of suspense produces hybrid and controlled works. Indeed, Rebecca carries both the Gothic influences of her native England (a laid-back prison atmosphere, a constant play on shadows borrowed from German Expressionism) and a penchant for Hollywood film noir.

The film also benefits from superb performances by Laurence Olivier as the ambiguous seducer, Joan Fontaine as the wisecracking heroine, and Judith Anderson as a jealous and manipulative governess whose spectral presence is haunting.

A masterful first effort for Hitchcock since Rebecca hit heights at the American box office before winning the Oscar for Best Picture.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca with Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson, Melville Cooper…

Tonight at Arte at 20:55.