In Hitchcock‘s filmography, ‘Marnie‘ (1964) comes after four masterpieces, probably among the best if not the best films of the master of suspense films: ‘Vertigo’, ‘North by Northwest’, ‘Psycho’ and ‘The Birds’ ‘. The last two also represented real cinematic revolutions, films that created a sensation from the release, but also contained countless innovations and paved the way for different cinematic genres. Hitchcock had nothing left to prove and could probably achieve anything he wanted. He chooses to produce and direct ‘Marnie‘ – the resuscitation of a project abandoned a few years before that originally aimed to bring Grace Kelly back to the screen. It is a film closer to what Hitchcock had done in the previous decades, a film that brings back to screen some of his obsessions: the fascination for women and especially for those with mysterious pasts, the search for the psychological problems of the characters in past traumas including childhood and the dream as atmosphere but also as a means of revealing the character of his heroes. He casts Tippi Hedren, who was also the feminine star in ‘The Birds’, in the lead role. However, their collaboration will end with this film that will burden Hitchcock’s biography with stories about attitudes that today would probably have made him the subject of boycotts generated by the MeToo movement. The male lead star is Sean Connery, who was filming ‘Marnie‘ between two episodes of the first series of James Bond films. To add background information, the first day of filming was scheduled to be November 22, 1963. It was postponed four days due to the assassination of JFK. Sufficient reasons of interest already, to which is added the fact that ‘Marnie‘ is a complex, uneven, unsettling film, in which many implausible situations and scenes with conventional dialogues and old-fashioned acting alternate with flashes of genius that can only be found in Hitchcock‘s movies.
The main character often changes her hair color, name and social security cards, and she has good reason to do so. She is a serial thief. She works at various companies, and after gaining the patrons’ trust she steals their money from the safe and disappears. Unfortunately for her, when she arrives searching a new job (and victim) at the offices of the Rutland firm, she is recognized by Mark, the firm’s boss, who had seen her at the premises of the previous business she robbed. The young, handsome and attractive Mark Rutland, however, decides not to say anything to the young woman whose real name is Marnie and begins to follow her. He discovers that she has hysterical phobias for thunderstorms and the color red. When he catches her stealing money from his company’s safe, Mark Rutland decides not to report her to the police but to … propose to her. Kind of blackmailing her into marriage. There will be other surprises during the honeymoon, for example the fact that Marnie refuses any physical contact. The discoveries related to the past of the young woman with the changing color hair are only at the beginning.
Does the story seem incredible? It really is, at least by today’s standards. It is also quite sordid, but the violence is packaged in the style of American films set in the luxurious homes of the rich. From Winston Graham‘s novel that inspired the film’s script, Hitchcock eliminated an important character, that of a psychoanalyst who consulted Marnie. His role is also taken over by the husband who trains himself from psychoanalysis books about criminal women. The result is that the film feels like a sequence of keyed dreams, as in many of the master’s films. The responsibility of making the complex relationship between Mark and Marnie believable on screen falls to the two actors – Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren. What are the reasons why Mark, instead of denouncing the young kleptomaniac, decides to marry her? Men’s fascination with ‘bad girls’? Scientific curiosity? or simply blind love? Is Marnie really a ‘bad girl’ or a victim of some buried traumas in the past? The talent of the two actors and the way their characters are portrayed in their complexity, with the mix of good and bad in every human’s character are the reasons why their bond crosses the screen well. We also find Hitchcock in several camera angles and compositions with objects as only he could imagine. The music of Bernard Herrmann, at his last collaboration with Hitchcock, is also worth noting. Like the sets, the music seems to belong more to the cinema of the 40s, with a demonstrative excess of violins. Hitchcock succeeded with ‘Marnie‘ to make a film that in its classic aspect describes one of the most violent and disturbing stories about the relationship between a man and a woman in all his films.