After completing The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock turned his focus on Winston Graham's novel, MARNIE, and it's easy to see why the Master of Suspense was so intrigued by it. The main character is a mentally deranged woman who becomes the center of fascination for a good looking, wealthy control freak. In some regards, it sounded like quintessential Hitchcock before the screenplay was churned out; if anything set it apart from what audiences expected out of him, it was the lack of traditional thriller elements. Bringing Marnie to the screen turned out to be a huge headache for Hitchcock. The screenplay went through a number of writers, the first of which was Psycho scribe Joseph Stefano. Hitchcock finally turned to playwright Jay Presson Allen, which was interesting considering the reason he kept firing the previous screenwriters. The novel contains an intense rape scene that felt unadaptable, since the concern was that once the male lead was finished, the audience would not like him anymore. This didn't seem to bother Hitch, so every time one of the writers refused to add it to their script, he replaced them. All the early drafts were written by men; it wasn't until he hired Allen, a woman, that he got what he desired.
Hitchcock believed the scene was crucial to the story, and was convinced that the right actor could keep the audience hooked no matter what he did. But casting a leading man was not the difficult part; that hinged on the leading lady. Hitchcock was eager to work with Grace Kelly again and at first, it looked as if she was going to play Marnie. But Kelly backed out at the last minute, a decision that Hitch apparently never got over. Having just worked with her on The Birds, he approached Tippi Hedren and she agreed. Since he had just put her through hell in one movie, why not go ahead and do it again?
I never would have suspected Hitchcock to be the James Bond type, but that's what drew him to Sean Connery. It turned out to be a perfect match. The amount of depth required to play a British spy is fairly limited, so it was to Hitch's credit that he was able to take Connery's suave onscreen appeal and turn it into something humane. The character strikes an odd balance between kindness and creepiness, making it hard for the audience to decide if we should sympathize with Connery or not.
I've often heard that Marnie functions as a companion piece of sorts to The Birds, and while I understand the comparison (mostly in context to what the main character goes through), I see the picture going alongside Vertigo. As we know, Hitchcock obsessed over his leading ladies; how they looked onscreen meant everything. For this reason, Vertigo could be viewed as Hitchcock's ultimate fantasy, since it was about a man more or less sculpting a woman into his ideal vision of what she should be. Like Vertigo, Marnie is a movie about control, specifically a man's control. In both cases, these men are portrayed as sexual predators.
But even if the men in Hitchcock's movies are predatory and domineering, they are still not the bad guys. Any action they have to take is the result of a situation the women have put them into; look at most of Hitch's thrillers and you'll find the root of the trouble leads to a female. Hitchcock always found a way to make it clear that the women are guilty; time after time, the plot involved an innocent "man" wrongly accused. But despite the fact the women created disaster upon disaster in Hitchcock's world, he also continued to show how fascinated the men were by them. I think this was a genuine reflection of Hitchcock's own deep fear and confusion with women. Why else would you spend your whole career making them indescribably nuts?
Marnie is a liar and a thief with a trepidation of men and a closet full of nervous ticks. Early in the movie when she goes to visit her mother (Louise Latham), there's a strong sense that Marnie's issues are family related. Her psychological deficiencies keep her on the move, staying in one place long enough to rob the safe where she's working. Since she skips town after each job, the thought of getting caught never crossed her mind. Enter Mark Rutland (Connery), born into money and running a huge corporation. When Marnie comes to work for him, he's immediately mesmerized by her looks and demeanor. It isn't until he tracks her down after she's emptied the safe that he realizes just how unstable she is.
Marnie becomes somewhat of an experiment for Mark. He is taken aback by her strange behavioral patterns, and seems convinced he might be able to fix them. After assuring her he won't turn her over to the cops, Mark forces Marnie to marry him even though she is terrified of his touch. It's hard to figure out at first if Mark's intentions are thoughtful. This is most evident in the controversial scene on their honeymoon when he (emotionally) rapes her. Every time Mark is forceful with Marnie, we might as well hear Hitchcock's voice coming out of his mouth.
In the novel, Marnie gets caught in a love triangle between two men. In the movie, it's no surprise that one of the men has been replaced by a woman, Mark's sister-in-law, Lil (a lovely Diane Baker). Her jealousy of Marnie is evident from the beginning, and once she finds out Marnie's secrets, tries to play an active part in pushing Mark away from her. To Hitchcock, this could be perceived as a delightful game: one woman is infatuated with the man, who is infatuated with the other woman.
As expected, Marnie is technically wonderful. Hitchcock stages each scene impeccably, so it's no surprise that he was stickler when it came to storyboarding. The standout is the opening, which follows Marnie from behind as she walks down the center of a train station platform. In classic Hitchcock fashion, her hair is the first of three different colors; it goes from black (mysterious) to blond (flirtatious) to brown (inconspicuous). This is the movie's first major echo of Vertigo. Other standouts include Marnie ripping off Mark's company safe and a horseback riding accident.
Marnie is wholly unpleasant and retching, but also endlessly absorbing and frightening. It represents Hitchcock at his best (and most naked), once again driving out of his lead actress a performance of raw intensity. Aside from Vertigo, I can't remember another picture where the Master bared his soul this openly. SPOILER ALERT This is most evident during the picture's conclusion, when we finally learn the reason for all of Marnie's mental trauma. As a child, her mother was a prostitute who would wake Marnie up in the middle of the night so she and her client could use the bed. One night, a visiting sailor innocently tries to comfort Marnie from a thunderstorm and her mother automatically takes it as a sexual advance. A scuffle ensues, ending with Marnie killing the sailor. The bottom line is that the off balance daughter is a direct product of her off balance mother.
You have to see Marnie to believe it, and even then, you still might not. When it was released, the feedback was less then encouraging, but over forty years later, it remains one of Hitchcock's most under appreciated movies. Even though it doesn't play like his most popular thrillers, it still manages to be chilling for all the right reasons. Film critic Walter Chaw said he didn't understand Hitchcock until he saw Marnie. After revisiting it for the first time in about seventeen years, I understand exactly what he means. With Marnie, Hitchcock proves that he was more than just the Master of Suspense; he also had quite a grasp on human despair.
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Copyright, Hell and Beyond, 2008
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