Revisiting Hitchcock’s Troubled by Fascinating Thriller Pyschodrama, Starring Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren–What You Need to Know
Marnie: Genre
Over the years, Marnie has been described as a Gothic melodrama, old fashioned woman’s film, mother-daughter melodrama, character study, art film, experimental (Expressionist) film, feminist film, misogynist text.
As the scholar Joe McElhaney observed, Marnie, more than any the Hitchcock film, contains unresolved tensions between the film’s goals and ambitions and its final achievements.
Hitchcock Trilogy
Marnie, a compendium of other films, marks the conclusion of a trilogy that began with Psycho and continued with The Birds.
Mark’s character:
Mark’s character may be just as complex and troubled as that of Marnie’s.
We learn that he has an older father (also womanizer), a young widower (though we never meet his late wife), and a man who early on had an ambition to become a biologist.
He leads a lonely, isolated life–until he meets Marnie–with no women or friends, just colleague.
He is burdened (though also enjoys teasing) by the love of his step sister-in law, Lil (Diane Baker).
But unlike Marnie, his contemporary status and current view of life has not been crippled by a troubling past.
Mark combines, in different segments of the story, several male archetypes, such as the sinister lover and than husband, a doctor-psychiatrist, determined to “cure” his wife of her various malaises, a detective obsessed with uncovering Marnie’s past as path to a future recovery.
Mark represents at once Marnie’s yet another cause of pain and also hope for a better future.
He is motivated by cruel need for revenge, at one point saying: “I’ve really trapped a wild thing, this time.”
He is a brute avenger, manipulating Marnie’s need of him, a man who cannot control his erotic lust, who rapes Marnie (after they get married), violating his earlier promise.
No Home
Marnie, like Marion in Psycho and Melanie in The Birds, does not belong anywhere, and has no place to call home as a safe emotional site.
In Psycho, we observe Marion’s room only briefly, as she packs her suitcase (with the money she had stolen), hitting the road.
In The Birds, we never see Melanie’s home at all.
In Marnie, we see one of her residences in the first scene, when she washes the color of her hair, chose a new ID (she has many), and packs suitcase.
