Last night I finally had a look at Criterion’s Rebecca Bluray, which has been circulating since 9.5. The second disc contains a discussion by film historian and visual-effects maestro Craig Barron about Rebecca‘s visual strategies and “trick” effects. Barron knows his stuff except for one nagging little thing. 10 or 12 times he mispronounces Manderley, the name of Maxim de Winter‘s grand Cornwall mansion, as “Mandalay.”
The odd thing is that the Criterion guys who shot and edited this visual essay didn’t notice the boo-boo. If they had, they could have simply asked Barron to drop by a recording studio somewhere and say “Manderley” a couple of dozen times into a microphone, and then loop in the correct pronunciation. No biggie. Or maybe they noticed the error but decided not to shell out the extra coin.
Criterion is supposed to be Tiffany-level, the gold standard of home video — letting a mistake like this slide is unbecoming.
Perhaps Barron vacationed in the Burmese city of Mandalay? Or did some consulting for Peter Guber’s Mandalay Entertainment? Or was thinking of Tod Browning‘s The Road to Mandalay?
Incidentally, Tom Snyder also mispronunced Manderley also back in the early ’80s:
