I have read several of Daphne Du Maurier's books and loved every single one. Rebecca is my favorite but this book came very close to it. I came across this movie on Netflix streaming and I am glad I did. It is a superb movie with some surprising developments. It has a "Downton Abbey" sensibility to it, a privileged family in post-war England losing its grip on the castle and what it takes to afford it. And it wants to exchange identities with us. And totally assimilate our innocence into its own cynical essence. which of these two men's life sounds most attractive to you? Would you rather be without a family, with no responsibilities, but also feel lonely, depressed and empty? The Scapegoat is a 1959 British mystery film based on the 1957 novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier, and starring Alec Guinness, Nicole Maurey and Bette Davis. [2] [3] Plot [ edit ]

Gaston’s wife, who wept upon the instant, said to me, ‘Death is beautiful. Madame Jean might be an angel in the sky.’ I did not agree. Death was an executioner, lopping a flower before it bloomed. The sky had glories enough, but not the soil.” The next day, brother-in-law Aristide discusses business with him. Later, in the nearby town, Barratt is nearly run down by De Gué's mistress, Béla, on her horse. He spends the usual Wednesday afternoon tryst getting acquainted with her. The next time they meet, before he can confess the truth, she informs him that she has already guessed it. One of the triggers was that while out for a walk in a square in a French town, Daphne du Maurier saw a man who looked identical to someone she happened to know. According to one of her biographers, Judith Cook, she then watched a family scene through a window, and began to put the two incidents together in her feverish imagination. Typically, she began to wonder about the people; who they were, and what their secrets might be, I've often fantasized about escaping my own life and transplanting somewhere else entirely. Better yet, trade places with my dog, Zelda. Du Maurier explores that idea here, through the characters of John (the English man) and Jean (the French man) who meet by chance one night and discover that while they might be strangers, they look exactly alike. Time for the old switcheroo? Du Maurier’s skill creates as much suspense in The Scapegoat as it did in Rebecca. Her characters are linked by dependency, hostilely, old hatreds, and money. Carefully, John listens and digests remarks, cautious not to denounce the absent Jean and so reveal himself to this accepting family.

John is leading a drifting, meaningless life. Until... he meets his Shadow, the evil Frenchman Jean - his Exact Double.

looks around her at the house and John suddenly realises that 'what she was looking at had once been part of her life'

My Book Notes

The Scapegoat is a 1957 novel by Daphne du Maurier. In 1959, it was made into a film of the same name, starring Sir Alec Guinness. It was also the basis of a film broadcast in 2012 starring Matthew Rhys and written and directed by Charles Sturridge. The basic plot is that a Frenchman in his early 40s runs into another man, an Englishman in his early 40s, who is a body double of him (doppelgänger). By clever means and not to his liking the Englishman finds himself forced to impersonate the Frenchman and inherits the Frenchman’s life and family…a brother and a sister and a mother and they’re all messed up to varying degrees, and a wife, and she is unhappy because her husband has been essentially ignoring her and only married her for a potential buttload of money if she produces a son for him (complicated legal arrangement regarding her dowry). Oh and that’s just the beginning…he inherits a precocious 11-year old daughter, a sister-in-law (who he is having an affair with), a valet, a mistress, a glass factory that is floundering… And given this is a du Maurier novel there have been sinister things happening well into the past…that this Englishman now fake Frenchman is going to have to deal with. Perhaps vaguely reminiscent of ‘Heaven Can Wait’, a film from the late 1970s starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie (and a gaggle of other good actors)…although that was a comedy/love story when push comes to shove. Not a whole lot to laugh at in this novel. In fact nothing really. At one point halfway through the novel, John feels that he is trapped in a corner. He feels impotent, and that whatever he does will not work; he is sinking further and further into a morass of his own making. The author describes the scene outside the house, Jean de Gue had acted wrongly. He ran away from his life, he escaped the emotions that he himself created. John brought forth 'his' emotions - and whether right or wrong...( I think even the most skeptical readers can suspend disbelief, in this masterfully written fiction novel), .....I had faith that what John was searching for would somehow transform not only him but heal bruised family members with empathy and love. But how? And at what cost? Immediately beside me was a gargoyle's head, ears flattened, slits for eyes, the jutting lips forming a spout for rain. The leaded guttering was choked with leaves, and when rain came the whole would turn to mud and pour from the gargoyle's mouth in a turbid stream... seeping down the walls, swirling in the runways, choking and gurgling above the gargoyle head, driving sideways like arrows to the windows, stinging the panes... there would be no other sound for hour after hour... but the falling rain, and the flood of leaves and rubble through the gargoyle's mouth."

A fluttering sound by the window made me turn my head. It was a butterfly, the last of the long summer, woken by sunshine, seeking escape from the cobwebs that imprisoned it. I released the butterfly from its prison, and it hovered a moment on the sill, then settled once more amongst the cobwebs."Just as an actor paints old lines upon a young face, or hides behind the part he must create, so the old anxious self that I knew too well could be submerged and forgotten, and the new self would be someone without a care, without responsibility, calling himself Jean de Gué... " The ending she refers to comes across to the reader as quite weak. It provides neither the delicious twist we have learnt to expect from this author, nor the massive ambiguity she can do so well. Clearly from this letter though, it is what she intended, and perhaps had to wrestle with internally herself. Perhaps after all it is a fitting ending to a novel, in which she delved into John/Jean's - and possibly her own - psyche and explored other, imaginary selves. Did she explore mere fantasies, or their secret lives? Increasingly after this novel, she became intrigued by what she called the "dark side" of our natures, and some of her best short stories and novellas, explore this theme. "Don't Look Now", "The Blue Lenses", and "The Breakthrough", are examples. They too are macabre and strange, tense and chillingly unexpected tales, relying on the same speculative atmosphere of suspense and mystery, both disturbing and uncanny. As our narrator uncovers the secrets of Jean’s life, he begins to insert his own sensibilities into the lives he controls. But does he see these people as they are, or does he supply his on version of them? Does he help them, or does he simply confuse and disrupt their lives? What would they think if they knew he was just a stranger playing at being their son, husband, father, brother, lover or master? And, what does he discover about himself along the way? John goes completely unprepared into Jean’s life. Jean has a chateau, a glassworks, a wife, a mistress, a lover, a brother, a mother, a daughter and a sister who hasn’t spoken to him for fifteen years. The whole context is strange to John, who has to find ways of dealing with all of these things—and Jean’s life really does feel as complex as real life, and the tightrope John walks through it keeps you holding your breath as you read. you' (pp.364-5). John says that at St Gilles his failure turned into love but 'the problem remains the same. What do I do with love?' (p.367). He leaves resolving to follow his original path to the Abbey de la Grande Trappe.