Marnie (film)
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| Marnie | |
|---|---|
 Original film poster |
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| Directed by | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Produced by | Alfred Hitchcock (uncredited) |
| Written by | Jay Presson Allen |
| Starring | Tippi Hedren Sean Connery Diane Baker Martin Gabel Louise Latham Bob Sweeney Bruce Dern |
| Music by | Bernard Herrmann |
| Cinematography | Robert Burks |
| Editing by | George Tomasini |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) |  July 22, 1964 |
| Running time | 130 min |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US$ 3,000,000 |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Marnie is a 1964 psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based on the novel Marnie by Winston Graham. The film stars Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery.
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[edit] Plot summary
Marnie Edgar (Tippi Hedren) is a troubled young woman who has an unnatural fear and mistrust of men, thunderstorms and the color red. She is also a compulsive thief. She uses her charms on Sidney Strutt (Martin Gabel) to get a job without references. Then late one night, she steals the contents of the company safe and disappears.
Mark Rutland (Sean Connery), a widower who owns a large printing company, is a good customer of Strutt's. He learns about the theft from the victim, and remembers the woman. So when Marnie applies for a job at his company, he is intrigued. He is robbed too, but unlike Strutt, Mark manages to track Marnie down. Instead of handing her over to the police, he blackmails her into marrying him.
On their honeymoon, he finds out about her frigidity. At first, he respects her condition, but her undisguised hostility to him incites him to rape her. The next morning, she tries to commit suicide, but Mark finds her in time.
He attempts to discover the reasons behind Marnie's behavior. In the end, Marnie and Mark learn that her mother, Bernice (Louise Latham), had been a prostitute. When Marnie was six years old, one of her mother's clients (a sailor played by Bruce Dern) had tried to calm her after she became frightened by a storm. Bernice thought he was trying to molest her daughter and began attacking him. Seeing her mother struggling with the man, Marnie struck him with a fireplace poker and killed him. The bloodshed ingrained in her a fear of the color red. Once the origin of her fears is revealed, Marnie decides she wants to try to make her marriage work.
[edit] Responses
The movie was not as successful in theatres as other Hitchcock productions, although did turn a profit in the UK and Italy.[citation needed]
Leonard Maltin has argued that Marnie was ahead of its time,[citation needed] while in his biography The Dark Side of Genius, Donald Spoto describes it as Hitchcock's last masterpiece.
The film's special effects are often criticized as unconvincing, with critics noting such things as obvious matte paintings and back projection.[citation needed] However, in a making-of documentary on the DVD, Robin Wood, author of Hitchcock's Films Revisited, argues that they can be defended if one notes the roots of the film in German Expressionism:
- "[Hitchcock] worked in German studios at first, in the silent period. Very early on when he started making films, he saw Fritz Lang's German silent movies; he was enormously influenced by that, and Marnie is basically an expressionist film in many ways. Things like scarlet suffusions over the screen, back-projection and backdrops, artificial-looking thunderstorms—these are expressionist devices and one has to accept them. If one doesn't accept them then one doesn't understand and can't possibly like Hitchcock."
[edit] Cast
- Tippi Hedren as Marnie Edgar. In Hitchcock and the Making of Marnie, Tony Lee Moral revealed that a studio executive at Paramount suggested actress Lee Remick to Hitchcock for the title role. Eva Marie Saint, star of Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959) and Susan Hampshire unsuccessfully pursued the role. He also considered two actresses who were under personal contract to him: Vera Miles and Claire Griswold (wife of director/actor Sydney Pollack). Hitchcock originally offered the role to Grace Kelly in 1962, by then Princess Grace of Monaco, and she agreed. However, residents of Monaco objected to her appearing in a film, especially as a disturbed kleptomaniac. Also, when Kelly married Prince Rainier in 1956, she had not fulfilled her MGM contract, thus MGM could have prevented her appearance in any feature film unless she fulfilled her contract to MGM first. Hitchcock was so upset by these complications that he put Marnie aside to work on The Birds (1963). Future soap opera actress Melody Thomas played the uncredited role of Marnie as a child in the flashbacks. In an interview, actress Catherine Deneuve indicated that she would have loved to have played Marnie [1].
- Sean Connery as Mark Rutland. Much criticism focused on Connery's American accent, with some critics suggesting that Laurence Olivier would have made a better choice for the role.[citation needed]
- Diane Baker as Lil Mainwaring, Mark's long-time friend.
- Louise Latham as Bernice Edgar.
- Martin Gabel as Sidney Strutt, one of Marnie's victims.
- Bruce Dern as the Sailor who traumatizes Marnie.
- Alfred Hitchcock's cameo is a signature occurrence in most of his films. He can be seen five minutes into the film, entering from the left of a hotel corridor after Marnie (wearing a dark wig as a disguise) passes by.
[edit] Production
In a making-of documentary on the DVD release, unit manager Hilton A. Green explains that shooting had been scheduled to begin on Monday, November 25, 1963, but had to be postponed because the nation was in mourning for John F. Kennedy.
[edit] Pop Culture References
The musical band Violets released a single in February 2007 titled Foreo, named after Marnie's horse. The rest of the song also makes references to the film, but the music video's images are inspired by Vertigo's opening credits.[2]
[edit] External links
- Marnie at the Internet Movie Database
- DVD Review of Marnie
- 2005 interview with Tippi Hedren, commenting on working with Hitchcock on The Birds and Marnie
- Marnie Screenshots and Pics at AHFO
[edit] Sources
1. http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,1577158,00.html
2. http://www.drownedinsound.com/release/view/9119
