Customer Reviews

Marnie

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I love most Hitchcock films with a couple of exceptions (eg. Frenzy) but Marnie is my favourite. It is not a thriller, nothing like Psycho or The Birds. Rather, it is a sophisticated psychological suspense film about a compulsive embezzler (played by Tippi Hedron) who changes her identity after each job until she is caught in the act by her dashing new employer (played by Sean Connery) who has fallen in love with her. Tippi plays the role of Marnie to perfection. She is mesmerizing. And Sean inhabits his role as Mark Rutland so completely that the famous Sean Connery disappears. It's also an unintentional commentary on the culture of the late 50's, early 60's. Feminists beware. The film is archetypal, an adult fairy tale and crime drama brilliantly rendered. The audience is made to care deeply about Marnie's fate. One of my top 10 movies of all time.

I have had traumatic childhood experiences with men, and Tippi Hedron's performance as Marnie shows an amazing depth of understanding of what it's like and how such things can affect you well into your adulthood. People may find it very unrealistic, but I have lived much of this (not the thievery!). It's amazing to me that her portrayal of the character shows such a depth of understanding of what I have lived.

Those who give poor ratings to this movie need to buy/rent thrillers with lots of machine-gun fire etc. This movie is not like that. But there are layers and layers of things to think about. It moves slowly at times as if Hitchcock supposed viewers could not make the connections very well. But there is enough here to provoke (as it has!) many essays and papers on the psychological issues it draws upon. QUITE WORTH A LOOK!!!

This is my favourite movie, probably because there isn't another film like it. It's a very intellegent and romantic thriller made just before movies started to tackle more 'adult' themes in a more graphic way. Marnie explores these themes but it is done in a romantasised and stylistic manner.

Hitchcock directs brilliantly as you'd expect and manages to coax a real tour de force from Tippi Hendren. Connery is in his prime and Louise Latham is truly staggering as Marnie's mother. The underated (and dead sexy) Diane Baker is also excellent.

I really can't recommend Marnie enough and this DVD is superb (better than the region 2 one).

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Format: Color
Studio: Universal Studios
Video Release Date: August 3, 1999

Cast:

Tippi Hedren ... Marnie Edgar/Margaret Edgar/Peggy Nicholson/Mary Taylor
Sean Connery ... Mark Rutland
Diane Baker ... Lil Mainwaring
Martin Gabel ... Sidney Strutt
Louise Latham ... Bernice Edgar
Bob Sweeney ... Cousin Bob
Milton Selzer ... Man at Track
Mariette Hartley ... Susan Clabon
Alan Napier ... Mr. Rutland
Bruce Dern ... Sailor
Henry Beckman ... First Detective
S. John Launer ... Sam Ward
Edith Evanson ... Rita
Meg Wyllie ... Mrs. Turpin
John Hart
Alfred Hitchcock ... Man leaving hotel room
Rupert Crosse ... Office worker
Louise Lorimer ... Mrs. Strutt
Kimberly Beck ... Jesse
Carmen Phillips ... Sidney Strutt's secretary
Melody Thomas Scott ... Young Marnie

One of Hitchcock's masterpieces, and like many other of his efforts, a psychological drama.

Marnie (Tippi Hedren) was a kleptomaniac, a compulsive thief. She supported her mother, Bernice Edgar (Louise Latham), who was a stern, domineering person of religious conviction with high standards of personal conduct, and who had turned her daughter into a man-hater.

Enter Mark Rutland (Sean Connery) who marries Marnie, knowing that she is a thief and liar, but unaware of all of her serious hang-ups. However, as the problems begin to surface, he tries to solve them.

Grace Kelly was originally considered for the part of Marnie, but was already the princess of Monaco and her subjects were less than enthusiastic about it, and besides, the picture was being made by Universal while she was still under contract to MGM, so she dropped the idea and never again considered a movie career. This was also an early effort in the career of Sean Connery, before his series as James Bond.

An entertaining film, with good acting throughout, and the excellent direction of Hitchcock, with his usual trademark cameo. You should enjoy the picture.

Bruce Dern plays a focal role, as well, as an unnamed sailor, but it is not an unimportant part.

Joseph (Joe) Pierre

author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance
and other books

Hitch was truly angry that Grace Kelly backed out of this project, so Tippi Hedren got the call. Then Hitch made Tippi-Marnie suffer. No director ever played out his psyche in film like Hitchcock. The rape fantasy is central to Marnie. The criminal female mind, both sensual and man hating in its ambiguity is portrayed in Freudian terms. Visually, Marnie is startling to see and familiar to Hitch's fans. The backgrounds, for example, Baltimore Harbor and Marnie's childhood street are beautiful, yet unreal in a plastic sense. I noticed this in Vertigo; a place is somehow more beautiful and possibly ominous because of painted device, careful set, or clothing design that we have not seen except for Spielberg in his space visitor films or Spike Lee in his plastic black neighborhoods, so we always feel while we are viewing that the real world is somehow enhanced. Then there's the details, the way the shots are set up. The camera gradually circles the blonde ice goddess. Give us a close up of the keys in the drawer with the combination and pull back to show the cleaning lady in a split shot with the burglar. Marnie is a psychological thriller and because it plays Hollywood-Freudian, it slows and is stilted or amateurish. Couch time is pretty much a personal drama difficult for a general audience to care about. For all the tribulations uttered on the shrinks couch, the story is still the thing on film. Marnie is predictable and slow to unwind. All the advantages of a slowly unraveling story helped Hitch in Vertigo, but Marnie seems to plod along. Still, Marnie is better than 99% of the films ever made.

I have PTSD. I've locked out large chunks of my childhood. I first saw Marnie when I was 17. It didn't knock my repressions loose, but it certainly stirred them up. I saw it again when I was in my forties, and I was recovering my memories. It knocked my socks off again. This movie would probably play completely differently to someone with a different history from mine. But it really hit it for me, and all those years when I was holding things down, I think it let me know that I was not alone.

Tippi Hedren (The Birds [1963]) is making a run for it. We see her with black hair with a yellow bag (looks like a fortune cookie) full of money. At the office, the boss is telling the authorities including Sean Connery (who was playing "James Bond" at the time) that this woman has stolen money from the office. She makes it to the train station. Turns her hair back to blond, changes social security cards and then goes to visit her mother. She brings gifts and white flowers for her. But her mom is tending to a blond neighbor girl and it makes "Marnie" jealous. She sees "red". Marnie does not like the color red for some unknown reason. She changes the red flowers to the white flowers. After the girl leaves, Marnie and her mom quarrel. She gets no comfort from her mother and the mother does not like Marnie touching her. Marnie finally asks her mother why she does not love her. Later we see Marnie having a bad dream about her mother and seeing a flash of red. The next day, Marnie in brown hair color applies for the job of a payroll clerk. She is hired and at the same place as Sean Connery. Just what is Marnie up to now? And why does the color red upset her so? Cast also includes Louise Latham, Mariette Hartley, Diane Baker, Alan Napier and Bruce Dern. DVD includes many interesting bonuses including production notes and the nearly five-minute theatrical trailer with Alfred Hitchcock narrating, in color.

Interesting only for curiousity's sake. A fan of Hitchcock or Connery should watch it mostly just to be able to say they've seen it. Marnie is neither Connery's nor Hitchcock's best work. In fact, it doesn't even crack the top ten for either. It does serve as an interesting bridge. It's one of Connery's 1st and one of Hitchcock's last. Sort of an unintentional generational passing the torch. The age of plot, suspense and mystery (classic Hitchcock going back to the 20's) giving way to the age of action, adventure and stunts (James Bond alive and well in 21st century). Tippi Hedren is the almost obligatory Hitchcockian disposable blond ice queen in the tradition of Grace Kelly and Kim Novak. More of an archetype than any one person. Hitchcock was infatuated with the blond ice queen type but its clear he also distrusted and didn't respect them. They reminded him of his overbearing mother too much and he makes them into either neurotics or nonentities. The story is both too weird to be taken seriously and too thin to sustain a 2 1/2 hour movie. The dialogue doesn't crackle and spark and the acting seems uninspired. Indeed, one wonders if the inexperienced and immature Connery really understood all the subtlties of the psychological machinations. There is a been-there-done-that feel to the movie for anyone who's ever seen more than a few Hitchcock thrillers. Consequently, as I watched it, I alternated between eye rolling exasperation and watch-checking fidgeting. The genius of the best Hitchcock movies (Notorious, Rebecca, Vertigo, Rear Window, and North By Northwest, among others, come to mind) is they were both odd and creepy and yet, strangely believable and compelling. Marnie fails to fascinate with intrigue or mystery.

It's always interesting and go back for another look, as one does with all great works. Memory plays tricks. And we all bring something of ourselves to the work. Having been a thief in my time I was struck with this film the first time I saw it many moons ago. Let me assure you, Mr Hitchcock knows the mind of a thief. I've seen this film a number of times and it has continued to grow in affection and stature as an excellent instance of his very best work. The support material, on the making of the film, its casting, how Hitch directs his actors, its genesis, actor's comments, are very informative and in the case of Ms Baker and Ms Latham, quite rivetting. Mr Bernard Hermann of course has a field day, as does Mr Freud. To call this work "cheesie" is a serious misrepresentation of one of Hollywood's finest efforts. A gem.