Mamet’s essay on aesthetic distance in Bambi vs Godzilla is all I could think about every time the (obvious) miniature of Manderley appears on screen during Rebecca:

An actor portrays a pianist. The actor sits down to play, and the camera moves, without a cut, to his hands, to assure us, the audience, that he is actually playing. The filmmakers, we see, have taken pains to show the viewers that no trickery has occurred, but in so doing, they have taught us only that the actor portraying the part can actually play the piano. This addresses a concern that we did not have. We never wondered if the actor could actually play the piano. We accepted the storyteller’s assurances that the character could play the piano, as we found such acceptance naturally essential to our understanding of the story, but when the camera tilts down to the actor’s actual fingers, we, in effect, experience this:

FILMMAKER - I’m going to tell you a story about a pianist.
AUDIENCE - Oh good: I wonder what happens to her!
FILMMAKER - But first, before I do, I will take pains to reassure you that the actor you see portraying the hero can actually play the piano.

We didn’t care till the filmmaker brought it up, at which point we realized that, rather than being told a story, we were being shown a demonstration. We took off our “audience” hat and put on our “judge” hat. We judged the demonstration conclusive but, in so doing, got yanked right out of the drama. The aesthetic distance had been violated.

Maybe this is a little unfair. It is an old movie and IMDb claims that Selznick was unable to find a suitable location, but what I can’t figure out is if it would have been okay to not show it at all. The grandeur is captured by the interior. Curiously enough, the blue-screened driving scenes don’t bother me at all, as these seem to be somewhat more essential to the story.