Please contact us
with corrections
or breaking news
What’s Wrong with Marnie? by Davell Swan
Marnie, played by Tippi Hedren, at the start of HItchcock's 'Marnie' ('64) as filmed by Robert Burks. photo: courtesy A. Hitchcock
"STARE, THAT'S WHAT YOU DO. YOU
stare and blare and say you care, but you're unfair and want affair," says Marnie to Mark in the film "Marnie".
Alfred Hitchcock's 49th feature film—"Marnie", released in 1964—has earned a glut of detractors and a polyglot of proponents. Robin Wood, one of the first public figures to understand and proclaim the director's deeply rooted genius as a filmmaker, via his 1965, A.S. Barnes & Co., Inc., book, "Hitchcock's Films", has this to say:
"There's a sense in which Hitchcock's is the most artificial form of cinema that's ever been invented... 'Marnie' is basically an expressionist film. Things like scarlet suffusions on the screen, back projection, 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."
In addition to carrying forward the Expressionist tradition, Hitchcock was an abject Surrealist. All of this could clarify his purpose for the nearly continuous use of visual fakery in "Marnie". But does it?
We believe that the combination of Hitch's superior, creative intelligence along with an inclination to sublimate his psycho-sexuality, has produced some of the penultimate, cinematically affecting and experimental popular entertainment, ever.
But how would this apply to Marnie? Attempting an answer to these and other begged questions, we'll subject the film to a merciless appraisal. First, is the story itself:
Fifteen year-old Bernice Edgar wants a local basketball player's sweater, which he trades for her virginity. She becomes pregnant and he flees. She considers the product of the union—Margaret Edgar, known as "Marnie"—to be unclean.
This experience suffices as proof for Bernice of an entire gender's worthlessness. She begins to view her femininity as a salable commodity, and proceeds to service sailors from a nearby Baltimore dock, which has a negative effect on the child.
When Marnie is approximately seven or eight years old, during a thunderstorm one night, she hears a client's distinctive three knocks. Bernice enters the bedroom, allowing the cold in and takes Marnie out to the living room, laying her on the couch. Being scared by the lightning and noise, Marnie begins to cry.
Our director as romantic fantasist: Boy loves girl, girl loves horse. photo: courtesy A. Hitchcock
Hitch's characters are often forced to make immediate decisions, that can unleash the initial chaos or take it to a higher plane. "Psycho's" (1960) Marion Crane, when advised by the hopeful and sensitively charming Norman Bates that she's only a few miles from her destination, agrees to take the room anyway; this results in her death. We can see that she made a bad decision.
The crux here is based on a similar set of bad decisions, made by three characters, however. Marnie's cries are overheard in the bedroom. The sailor exits and tries to comfort her, but makes her uncomfortable and she cries for her mother.
Bernice assumes he's molesting the girl and violently tries to drag him away. As he fights off her blows, she grabs a fireplace poker and hits him on the head, which greatly increase his anger.
Bernice drops the poker and calls for Marnie to help. The child bangs said sailor on the head with the poker, killing him and spilling splotches of blood onto his white uniform. During the scuffle, he falls onto Bernice's leg, giving her a permanent disability. She henceforth refers to this series of events as her "accident."
Marnie is traumatized, and represses the memory while developing a terror that's energized by thunder and lightening, along with the color red, and arranged on a white background. Also, as her mother continues to instill a hatred and fear of men, she cultivates an aversion to being handled by them.
Bernice takes the blame, claiming at trial she killed the man in self-defense, and is acquitted. While in the hospital, she refuses to allow the authorities to take her child away. However, this incident worsens Bernice's way of dealing with her daughter's illegitimate birth.
Postmodernism: Contemporary term for a component of surrealism, long practiced by our director? photo: courtesy A. Hitchcock
As an adult, Marnie craves the love she cannot get from her mother and becomes a compulsive thief. This is exacerbated by the presence of a young girl always found at her mother's house, who obviously is receiving love the mother cannot give to her actual daughter.
Marnie violates the manhood of various trusting employers by penetrating and emptying their company safe, while keeping her charms private.
She has a horse, Foreo, at a stable, which she visits as often as possible, usually between jobs. This is her single loving relationship.
Coincidentally, Marnie applies for a job at Rutland & Co. It's headed by Mark Rutland, who noticed her when she was employed at Strutt, his tax consultant, where she accomplished her last caper. He happens to be present when she interviews, and secures her hiring against his subordinate's wishes.
Not unlike Francie in "To Catch a Thief" (1954), he develops an interest and then an attraction to a potential lover because she's a felonious thief. Eventually, Mark asks Marnie to work in his office for an afternoon, and a thunderstorm with lightening causes her to panic.
A huge branch crashes through a window and Mark takes hold of the now hysterical girl. Being a zoologist, interested in instinctive behavior, he's intrigued by her great fear and treats Marnie as a project, a problem to be solved. He kisses her.
They attend a horse race, where a previous victim confronts Marnie, causing Mark to bully him into backing off. They enter the paddock section of the track and Marnie has a temporary emotional breakdown brought on by a jockey's white shirt covered by big red dots. Mark's intrigue with her only increases.
What Mark assumes to be a romance with Marnie quickly ensues. This apparently drives her to rob Rutland & Co. after an unusually short period of employment.
Mark tracks her down. He implies that her option is being remanded to the authorities or marrying him. Despite her exclamations of disgust over this prospect, they are united in Holy Matrimony. (We see that Mark, like his creator, is a fantasist.)
Hedren responds to her director's expressionistic tendencies for a publicity still. photo: courtesy A. Hitchcock
Mark is a widower. His young sister-in-law, Lil, who continues to live with the family, is in love with Mark and immediately becomes jealous of Marnie. (She's also a fantasist.)
On their honeymoon cruise, although Marnie again makes plain that she cannot be touched by a man, he gently but firmly rapes her, despite the apparent oxymoron. She attempts suicide, he saves her (and steadfastly remains a fantasist).
Back home, they share two connected bedrooms in his family mansion. He requires Marnie to play the role of an adoring wife for Lil and his father. She has another distraught episode and Mark attempts a quasi-psychoanalysis, reminding us of Hitchcock's 1945 project, "Spellbound". This is the very beginning of her cure.
The following day, he appears with a trailer containing Marnie's beloved Foreo. She gives Mark a friendly look while professing love to the horse, tosses her shoes and climbs onto the unsaddled equine's back and quickly disappears.
A party is to be thrown and Lil is responsible for the invitations. To Marnie's extreme shock, pathologically envious Lil invites Strutt, who we recall as the girl's previous victim. Marnie prepares to run away but Mark stops her, suggesting various strategies for dealing with Strutt.
She explains that there have been a number of other, similar thefts, and they both discuss the conundrum. The following day Marnie, sans Mark, rides in an old-fashioned, English hunt.
Everything's dandy until the dogs corner the fox and cruelly dispatch it. This, and looking up to be confronted by the back of a red jacket, brings on an attack of madness. She spurs Foreo to race furiously away, Lil follows.
Surrealistic Taxicab: fab phoniness indicative of our heroine's perspective or cinematic laziness? photo: courtesy A. Hitchcock
They approach a stonewall and Marnie finds herself unable to control the horse. Foreo attempts a jump, fails and his back legs hit the wall knocking him to the ground. As he writhes in pain, Marnie accosts a woman living nearby, screaming to be given a gun.
Lil arrives and when she's given the weapon, Marnie grabs it away, almost accidentally shooting the housewife. Gracefully, Lil offers to do the awful deed or have one of the men do it.
Marnie knows she must be the one to end Foreo's agony and does so. Though this is an excruciating situation for her, a second awakening is accomplished toward recalling the "accident."
Back at the mansion, Mark is advising Strutt he must accept restitution and drop the matter. Marnie, unnoticed, walks in and takes the key to the Rutland & Co. safe combo drawer. After opening the safe, she finds herself unable to pluck the lucre.
Mark appears and says he'll take her home. He's had an investigator locate Marnie's mother and has read the murder trial transcript. Seeing her extremely unstable state of mind, Mark decides they must confront the mother, thereby encouraging Marnie to recall the troubling incident.
The couple arrive at Bernice Edgar's Baltimore home. Marnie doesn't want to get out of the car. Mark again forces her to do something, but this time it's for the good.
Inside, the mother grabs Mark's hands and wrestles with him after he's forced her to begin acknowledging the circumstances leading to her "accident." This struggle triggers a remembrance of the killing for Marnie.
Mark encourages her to continue the recall, against Bernice's wishes, and she's finally able to face the source of her many problems. A great amount of pressure is thereby relieved for both the girl and mother, who finally acknowledges love for her daughter. Marnie indicates she wants to deal with her robberies and Mark claims she won't be jailed after he explains the reasons for her compulsion.
Although much of the profound splendor inherent in Hitchcock's canon is his brilliant and unique use of cinematic expression, characterization would seem to be at the very basis of his work. This we'll approach in the following installment.
(End Part I of a four part, in-depth exegesis.)
Davell Swan is a writer, filmmaker and singer, as well as Hitchcock-obsessed head of SF's HitchCult, who can be reached .