Rebecca (1940)

Oh yeah, you didn’t think you’d make it through this list without a reference to the other Rebecca now, did you?

This version, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won two, including Best Picture. And, yeah, it weaves that all-too-familiar tale of lust and jealousy. However, as previously noted by Stylist’s Hannah Rose Yee, Hitchcock’s adaptation of Rebecca had to pare back its provocations and immorality in order to adhere to the prescriptive Hays Code, Hollywood’s list of guidelines for what could and couldn’t be shown onscreen between 1930 and 1968. This included profanity – including God, Lord, Jesus, Christ, hell and damn – nudity, drug use, interracial relationships, scenes of childbirth and basically anything too sexy or suggestive.

Which means that, yeah, it spins a far less sexy version of the du Maurier classic than that we have in our heads. Go figure. Fingers crossed the Netflix version better sates our desires, eh?

Daphne du Maurier films: the 7 best adaptations, from The Birds to Rebecca