Marnie

"You Freud, me Jane?"

It would be a slight understatement to say that Alfred Hitchcock's "Marnie" is an unusual psychological thriller. Beneath the beautiful and poised persona she presents to the world, Marnie Edgar (Tippi Hedren in a superb performance) is a compulsive thief and sexually frigid, with a mysterious terror of thunderstorms and the color red. Like the other heroines in Hitchcock's previous films ("Psycho" and "The Birds"), she is also a liar who is made to suffer disproportionately the consequences of her lying. Her punishment is Mark Rutland (Sean Connery who is also splendid), an ex-zoologist and sexual blackmailer who threatens to turn Marnie over to the police if she does not agree to marry him. He exudes a cruel, wary fascination for the heroine that steadily builds into one of the most disturbing portraits of courtship and desire in Hitchcock's entire output. His liberation of Marnie from her mental trauma is the substance of the drama but one cannot help feeling that, with Mark as her predatory mate, Marnie's problems might conceivably be just beginning. Alfred Hitchcock considered "Marnie" an unusual mystery because the search is not for a criminal but for the criminal's motivations. It's possible that even he didn't realize that this "search for motivation" is NOT the key to the film, and those viewers led to believe it is will find the final scene infuriating. First and foremost, "Marnie" is about a woman with many aliases, who is involved in a desperate "search for identity," who can only stop living a life of lies if she learns the truth about her past. Finding out exactly what happened on that fateful, fatal night in Marnie's childhood is not necessary. What matters is that Marnie learns of an event, any event, that happened in her life just before she moved permanently into a world of make believe. This bit of history is the shaky foundation in which she can build a real life. Actually, the particular events that transpired on that horrible night only explain the content of Marnie's nightmares and the reason she reacts hysterically to thunderstorms and the color red and her mother's motivations for denying Marnie motherly love and indoctrinating her to detest all men (thereby ruining her child's life). The revelations also serve to let viewers draw parallels between Marnie and her mother. The revelations in the film don't sufficiently explain why Marnie is a thief and is frigid, but that's fine because we can deduce the reasons early in the film. "Marnie" is one of the strangest and most haunting of Hitchcock's films. It is finely acted by the entire cast. Diane Baker as Mark's jealous sister-in-law, Lil, Louise Latham as Marnie's mother, and Martin Gabel as Strutt are as impressive as the principals. Bernard Herrmann's surging score is richly romantic. It may not be the finest of his stunning quintet of films beginning with "Vertigo", but it serves as a summation of his films at this time: the bold and unusual technique, the increasingly complex probings into areas of human sexuality and individual identity, not to mention subsidiary themes to do with female criminality, male criminality, and maternal possessiveness. [filmfactsman]

A forgotton piece

This is movie is good. The story is about a woman named Marnie who steals for a job, She applys for Rutland&Co. There she meets Mark(Sean Connery) after she trys to steal, he finds out and instead of turning her against the police he proposes marriage, Marnie accepts. On the honeymoon he promises not to touch her, but one night when he is drunk he rapes her . When they come back from there honeymoon they return took his family's house to live. While there Mark trys to find out what causes Marnie to freak out when she sees the color red and why she has such a passionate hatered of men. I think this is one of Alfred Hitchcock's best even though many people disagree. I think this is a movie worth buying if your a big Alfred Hitchcock fan. Mandy

Vapid. Boring. Horrible.

My wife and I agree that this is the worst movie that either of us has either seen--EVER. The plot seems to have come from one of those sobby books for half-bright and troubled pre-teens in sixth grade. Worse yet, it's more boring than watching paint dry. This is basically Oprah writ large, an endless whinefest about the nobility of irresponsibility and dysfunctional self-absorbtion. Bottom line: If you like Dr. Laura and her sob sister genre and need prozac for breakfast, you might like this movie. Otherwise, the mere time it takes to slog through it isn't worth it.

The picture quality is really terrible.

The picture quality is really terrible. Buying this DVD is just a waste of money.

Write a headline for your review here:

It is time now to write a review for ''Marnie''. I've watched it six times this year already, twice in January and four times since I bought it about three weeks ago. When a movie is good enough to be watched so many times in succession, it's really a six-star film - but as this reviewing system allows only five, I'll rate it five. The trailer gets five stars of its own.* I will confess that the first time through - much as I found the story interesting - this movie did seem to drag a bit. I kept thinking, half this film is Sean and Tippi sitting in the car - or so it seemed - but the second time, I enjoyed it much more and it didn't drag at all. I started to listen to all the good lines which made the ''endless car scenes'' go driving on by with all swiftness, and each subsequent viewing has been even better.* Various observations: In the credits, it says: Miss Hedren's Hairstyles Designed by Alexandre of Paris, and right below that: Colour by Technicolour. I think that is pretty good. I liked the way that Lil, jealous of Mark's love for Marnie, often appears wearing green, sitting on green couches, or having green lamps behind her. I found Lil's character annoying, but it was a necessary annoyance, I suppose, and I've become relatively used to her by now. I also liked the idea conveyed by Marnie walking along a yellow caution line at a railway station in the beginning of the movie. Strutt is a weirdo and the actor was perfect for the part; I wonder what he looked like without the gross tortoiseshell glasses. There is a scene when Marnie paces back and forth in her room, passing the tall posts of her bed every time, as if she is an animal in a cage. The free association scene was good as well, with a couple good lines, one of the best being, ''You Freud, me Jane?'' Cousin Bob the banker dude was quite the perfect weirdo for the part, and Daddy Rutland was a pretty shallow but friendly personage with his one-track mind focused only on horsesandtea. Marnie had some pretty interesting outfits - two pretty Star-Trekky bathrobes as well as a hat like a fur doughnut. Marnie's mother was good with the Southern accent and the little girl Jessie was even more annoying than Lil. * Oh, and before I forget. People are forever griping about the ''tacky rear projection'' in the riding scenes, the ''obviously fake backgrounds'' of the ship and of Rutlands', and the ''tacky zooming in and out'' in Marnie's final attempt at theft from the safe. Let me point out to you that several other Hitchcock films, regarded by the critics and general Hitchcock-appreciating public, have similar moments. In ''The Birds'', ''To Catch a Thief'', ''Spellbound'', and others, there was some very obvious back projection. Big deal. The general idea of rear projection is to make it look like the person or vehicle on the treadmill is moving. It works every time and looks fake every time, no matter what the movie. Accept it and get over it. And in ''Vertigo'', there was a whole lot of zooming going on in the tower scenes. Was that tacky? I don't think so. The zooming accomplished the purpose in ''Vertigo'' and it does the same in ''Marnie''. So in short I don't think it's right to treat ''Marnie'' as a second-rate film with these arguments as the excuses. I think that's exactly what they are - excuses. I think that the people who say all those things got their glasses mixed up and are simply watching it with tinted glasses over their emotional eyes and a clarifying lens over their critical ones. Well... it's their loss - no one has to like anything, but it would be nice if more people did. * I think this review is becoming too long now so I should stop typing before I think of anything else. See this movie at least twice with an open mind. Be like me, an interested spectator in the passing parade - even if you don't get it.

I rate a movie 5 stars when I can watch it...

at least 5 times in a row and still be fascinated by it. Okay, I first saw Marnie many years ago (1986 maybe) when I was about 24 yrs. old. It was really a good movie to me then. I did not see it again until recently, here in 2002, and I am now 39 yrs. old. and I must say that I still find it a very good movie...Many critisisms are made about this film, some I think are wrong. Yes, the horseback riding scenes are noticably fake, but could you or I do better with what special effects they had at the time? Probably not. Many also complain of the fake backround scenes (the ship, Rutland's office bldg.) but personally I find these very nice, and add a surreal touch, and also a claustrophobic mood to the film. To me, what is important is the story, the characters. And I feel that Hitchcock chose his players well here. Sean Connery is perfect as Mark Rutland. I never cared for him in the James Bond movies(did he really act in them?), but here he did act and was very good; had the manliness and good looks, the command of the many emotions he had to play,he does great with all those facial expressions, and had some wonderful lines! Just great!! I personally do not care for Tippi Hendren much. But I feel she did a good job here. Again,let's not be too critical of her acting. I can only believe that to play such a disturbed character was extremely difficult and would have been a challenge for even the best schooled actress. I think she was believable for the most part, though a few times I felt she didn't quite hit the emotion of the moment on target. She was superb in the scene coming into the house with the gun after shooting her horse,she convinced me that she could have easily shot anyone who got in her way. She was also great in the ''free association'' scene with Mark. You could feel with her that she could not deal with the associations of herself to the words, esp. the words sex, death, and red...Anyway, this is one of my favorite Hitchcock films. He again had a great story, and used symbolism, cinemetography, color (color plays big in this movie: red of course, but also the green for jealousy, the general grey of the atmosphere),and music to tell the story... I recommend that anyone interested in the ''art'' of film should watch this movie...The costumes were quite good, liked Sean Connery in all those wonderful suits, Tippi had some nice outfits(yet I hated her honeymoon bathrobe), her hair was nice most of the time, but at times I thought the style was not becoming for her. Mark Rutland's ugly grey car was disgusting! Couldn't he have driven a grey Mercedes or something? The supporting cast was excellent as well: Lil, Strutt, Marnie's mother...The close-up kiss in the storm scene was a bit much, but Hitchcock must have had a reason for it. Oh, by the way, the trailer at the beginning of this film is hilarious!! Hitchcock had a great sense of humor...To speak of the subject matter, Marnie's illness. I think Hitchcock handled it well, but I don't think he meant for us to presume Marnie is cured at the end. I think the end is a bit open ended, in that much will still need to be worked out between Marnie and her Mother, and between Marnie and Mark. Yet since she was able to come to face the reality of the past, the ending gives us hope that she can be victorious in healing from the past. I recommend this film very much.

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.