If there’s anything that Alfred Hitchcock loved more than an impeccably plotted setpiece or perfectly planned shot, it probably was taking the fraying psyche of a flawed frosty, blonde woman and cracking it open like an egg for all to see. He couldn’t get enough of it, be it the tragic, duplicitous nature of Judy Barton in Vertigo, or the opportunistic nature of Marion Crane in Psycho, and if that wasn’t enough, he also seemed to really enjoy punishing the living crap out of them for their so called sinful peccadilloes. This famous urge of his arguably reached critical mass with Marnie, a thriller tinged drama that took the trope to its natural, if uncomfortable, extremes and that seemed to be Hitch’s last word on the subject.
However, despite containing the long suffering Tippi Hedren (possibly still smarting from nearly losing an eye in The Birds) and a smugly predatorial Sean Connery, Marnie isn’t exactly counted among Hitchcock’s best and brightest – so the question is, had the notoriously manipulative director finally gone too far?
Margaret “Marnie” Edgar has something of a concerning side hustle and we’re made privy to it the moment we meet her as she absconds from her secretarial job with $10,000 she’s swiped from the safe. As she gets away clean, her baffled previous employer embarrassedly admits to the authorities that he had hired the woman without asking for references while intrigued wealthy client Mark Rutler listens on.
As Marnie returns home to her invalid mother whom she supports fanancially in Baltimore, we soon get the idea that this repeat offender isn’t exactly on an even keel, mentally speaking. He strained relationship with her mother is one thing, as she seems to be intensely jealous of any affection that Bernice Edgar shows anyone else, even the neighbourhood children, but their conversation feels stilted and tense as if something unsaid was constantly hanging in the air between them. However, while women who don’t get along with their mothers are a dime a dozen in drama/thrillers, there’s a few other things about Marnie that trigger a few alarms, with the first being her violent aversion to seeing the colour red which causes almost instantly hysteria. The second is an almost childlike fear of thunderstorms and finally (and most typically for Hitchcock), Marnie has a real dislike for being touched and this revulsion gives her a frosty or “frigid” demeanour when it comes to the opposite sex.
Speaking of the opposite sex, when Marnie gets up to her old tricks again months later and tries to make off with another load of cash from a different firm, she’s spotted by the owner who just happens to be Mark Rutler. However, instead of calling the cops, Mark’s developed feelings for his new employee as promises to keep her out of jail on one condition: she becomes his wife.
Is Mark living out his own messed up issues, or does he truly believe he can actually help Marnie change her ways by unearthing a past that proves to be shockingly dirty.
The view of Hitchcock as an extremely controlling individual whose movies tended to paint women as untrustworthy damaged goods has always been a popular one, but with Marnie it truly seemed that the auteur was flat out confirming it in a film that quietly and disconcertingly reveals itself to be pretty fucked up. While the “frosty blondes” who often populated his thrillers were often the catalysts to the action, sometimes luring the male hero into a sticky situation or just making things complicated with their wayward ways, here he places one front and centre and then proceeds to assault her with trauma in an effort to finally see once and for all what makes them tick. While I cannot confirm or deny that Marnie often seems like therapy for Hitch himself as he tries to solve the riddle of a headstrong woman, it is worth noting that it is the last film he ever made that actually used his famous trope, so maybe it was always intended to be something of a last word on the subject
If that’s true, then Hitch certainly didn’t fuck about as his detailed and truly disconcerting peeling back of the layers of Marnie’s inner skeletons often results in some genuinely uncomfortable moments as the central “romance” goes to some truly dark places. Hedren’s Marine may be the more traditionally fucked up of the central duo, what with her repressed memories giving her the sort of triggers that usually inspire the killer in a Dario Argento movie to go on a killing spree, but Sean Connery’s Mark Rutland plays an even more controversial role as an obsessed man who plans to cure her through coercion, manipulation and even an act of implied sexual assault.
As shocking as this all sounds, we should remember that Hitch rarely indulged in anything as twee as black and white during this stage in his career, and the suffocating greys that come from this insanely toxic relationship does prove to be every bit as perversely fascinating as it is subtly salacious. In fact, casting the famously secually manipulative James Bond in the role of Mark proves to be something of a twisted masterstroke as even the most innocuous of comments coming from Connery during the 60s always seemed to carry an undertone of ruthless seduction. Mark may think he’s being the hero by trying to panel beat the crazy out of Marnie’s mind with heavy handed psycho analysis and flat out mental abuse, but even he admits he’s probably doing this all because he loves the hunt and the challenge and in his own way, he’s just as messed up as his lover/project.
However, while this all sounds like the recipe of a classic Hitchcock thriller that fuses the repellent and the sordid in a way that proves to be utterly gripping, Marine moves at such a snails pace, it proves to be more of a drawn out ordeal which will have you openly wondering where the hell it’s actually going during numerous times. The performances are solid and Hitch, as always, has a firm grasp on the visuals, but the director’s attempt to spread this all out over two hours and ten minutes means there’s a fair bit of drag before we get to the bottom of Marnie’s torments and it’s hardly edge of the seat sort of stuff.
There’s also the moral aspect of what the film is about and while I don’t personally agree with some of the things seem to be hinting at when it comes to “controlling” a woman, I do like it when Hitchcock gets twisted – however, some may take the story as just as Hitch’s excuse to publicly state that all some women need is a strong hand and a screw. Maybe if Hitchcock didn’t pace the thing like he was filming some fucked up romance, Marnie would be regarded more as an incredibly divisive classic, but while uncovering the deepest, darkest secrets of the final Hitchcock blonde certainly comes with its fair share of fireworks, it’s missing that relentless drive that made his other films crackle.
So is it a happy ending or a tragic ending? Well, Hitch, ever the mischievous trickster, would probably just reply “yes”.
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