"Marnie is a very difficult picture to classify. It is not Psycho, nor do we have a horde of birds flapping about and pecking at people willy-nilly," says director Alfred Hitchcock.

 Without giving anything away...

The people we have to thank...

"You Freud, me Jane?"

Marnie isn't my favorite Hitchcock film. Notorious is. I liked Marnie. She deserved a better film treatment, because I just didn't think the cardboard backdrops were that powerful, even though Robin Wood, Hitchcock critic extraordinaire, insists that's a deep and meaningful part of the movie. And I didn't like Mark, except for the times when he didn't try to pretend he wasn't a jerk. Then he was funny and kind of charming. All the men I know who saw this movie thought Mark was wonderful. Because he's Sean Connery.

 

I identified with Marnie. But I've never stolen anything. There's no reason to be scared. Even though for weeks after I saw Marnie for the first time, I kept catching myself imitating her walk and her facial expressions and her speech patterns.

It's got some really catchy dialogue.

And a lot of horses.

No one ever jumps a horse in a movie unless that horse is going to die later. Like in Gone With the Wind. Forio didn't look that badly hurt to me. How bad could it be? More than a couple of broken legs? But I felt really bad for Marnie. For some reason I thought she was really brave for shooting her horse, even though I do not approve of horse-shooting as a rule. That just goes to show you how easily manipulated my emotions are. Read my take on Animals in Marnie.

Why is this background pink?

There's a closeup of Marnie's hands near the beginning of the movie, and she's wearing pink nail polish. Most out of character. One wonders why it isn't red. One soon finds out. Over and over again. Anyway, all the other Hitchcock pages are black, and I didn't want this to be like all the other ones, especially because it's only about Marnie.

Red is an important color in Marnie. Maybe there's too much red. Nobody likes to have a concept forcibly drummed into them; makes you feel like someone thinks you're stupid. Some people told me they think the scene of Marnie freaking out when she gets red ink on her blouse was gratuitous, but I think that was the best use of red and of freaking-out. It makes lots of sense that Marnie would be unnerved by seeing a red stain on her clothing, because the whole reason she's scared of red is the blood on the sailor's shirt. I thought the polka-dotted jockey was gratuitous, myself. And maybe the red hunting jackets. Except hunting jackets are always red, at least when they're on rich people.

 In Closing...

I don't like the end of Marnie. She says "I don't have to go to jail, do I? I'd rather stay with you" to Mark, and I don't believe it for a second. At this point in the movie I still think Mark is a jerk, and I hope Marnie does, too. I hope she was just being just conniving. It sounds awfully conniving to me. Marnie would never say anything that dippy and mean it.

Some Marnie Treats

The Players.

My Marnie Photo Gallery. Every page has a photo gallery, I guess. Here's mine. I wrote all the captions.

Trivia.

Winston Graham wrote the book that Marnie's based on. Here's what I think of it.

You are visitor to this page!