Marnie (film)

Plot

Margaret "Marnie" Edgar (Tippi Hedren) steals $10,000 from her employer's company safe and flees. She had used her charms on Sidney Strutt (Martin Gabel), a tax consultant, to get a clerical job without references. After changing her appearance and identity, she makes a quick trip to a horse stable in Virginia, where she keeps a horse named Forio, and then to Baltimore for a surprise visit to her mother, Bernice (Louise Latham). Though Bernice seems to care more for a young neighbor named Jessie than she ever did to her own daughter, Marnie shows love for her and gives her money.

When Mark Rutland (Sean Connery), a wealthy widower who owns a publishing company in Philadelphia, sees Strutt on business, he learns of the robbery. He recalls Marnie from a previous visit. Unaware of this, Marnie applies for a job at Mark's company; intrigued, he hires her as a typist, and they see each other socially. When Marnie has a panic attack during a thunderstorm, he hugs her and quietly kisses her. Marnie also has bad dreams and a phobia of the color red.

Marnie repeats her crime at Mark’s company, stealing a large sum of money and fleeing. Mark tracks her down at the horse stable where she keeps Forio. Shockingly, he blackmails her into marrying him. They marry, much to the chagrin of Mark's former sister-in-law, Lil (Diane Baker), who has had an eye on him ever since her sister's death. Lil learns that he is spending extravagantly on Marnie and becomes suspicious. On her honeymoon cruise, Marnie admits to Mark that she cannot stand to be "touched by a man". Mark begins by respecting her wishes, but later, after days of frustration, he rapes her. The next morning, she attempts suicide by drowning herself in the ship's pool, but Mark manages to save her in time.

Upon their return home, Mark discovers that Marnie's mother is still alive; he hires a private investigator to find out all he can about the woman. Meanwhile, Lil overhears that Mark has "paid off Strutt" on Marnie's behalf, so she mischievously invites Strutt to a party at Mark's house. There, a furious Strutt recognizes Marnie, but does not expose her after Mark threatens to take his business elsewhere. When Marnie later admits to additional robberies, Mark offers to pay back all her victims to keep the police away.

Invited to ride in a fox hunt, Marnie enjoys herself, but becomes perturbed when the hounds corner the fox and begin to pull it from its den. When another rider wearing a traditional scarlet coat comes into view, her phobia kicks in and she bolts on her horse Forio. After a wild gallop, the horse falls and suffers a catastrophic injury, forcing Marnie to shoot him. Crazed with grief, Marnie goes to Mark's office to rob his safe again, but this time, she cannot bring herself to do it. Mark surprises her and eggs her on to take the money, but still she cannot.

He then takes Marnie to Baltimore to see her mother, Bernice, to extract the truth from her about Marnie's past. It is revealed that Bernice was a prostitute. When Bernice attacks Mark hysterically, Marnie's long-suppressed memories suddenly surface. She remembers that when she was a child, a drunken sailor (Bruce Dern), one of Bernice's clients, had tried to comfort her during a thunderstorm. His attentions were intimate, hugging and kissing the child. Bernice, fearing he was molesting Marnie, attacked him. A fight ensued in which Bernice's leg becomes hurt, the source of her long term limp. Frightened, Marnie struck the sailor with a fireplace poker and killed him. The red blood from his wound causing her deep phobia of that color. Bernice calmly admits everything, and she tells how she got Marnie, and how much she has always loved her. Now understanding the source of her fears, Marnie asks Mark what to do; he lets her know that he is on her side and will defend her. She responds, "I don't want to go to jail; I'd rather stay with you."

Development and writing

Alfred Hitchcock began developing the film adaptation of Winston Graham's novel Marnie in 1961. He commissioned Joseph Stefano, the screenwriter of Hitchcock's recently released Psycho, to work on the script. Stefano made extensive notes and wrote a 161-page treatment. The director's first choice to play the title role, Grace Kelly, by then Princess Grace of Monaco, withdrew from the project when the citizens of Monaco objected to her appearing in a film, especially as a sexually disturbed thief. Also, when Kelly married Prince Rainier in 1956, she had not fulfilled her contract with MGM, which could have prevented her from working for another studio. As a consequence of Kelly's departure from the film, Hitchcock put it aside to work on The Birds (1963).

After completing The Birds, Hitchcock returned to the Winston Graham adaptation. Evan Hunter, who had written the screenplay for The Birds, developed Marnie with Hitchcock, and wrote several drafts. Hunter was unhappy with the rape scene in the original novel as he felt the audience would lose sympathy for the male lead. The director, however, was enthusiastic about the scene, describing to Hunter how he intended to film it.

Hitch held up his hands the way directors do when they're framing a shot. Palms out, fingers together, thumbs extended and touching to form a perfect square. Moving his hands toward my face, like a camera coming in for a close shot, he said, "Evan, when he sticks it in her, I want that camera right on her face".

Hunter wrote a draft containing the rape scene but also wrote an additional, substitute sequence, which he pleaded with Hitchcock to use instead. Hunter was dismissed from the project on 1 May 1963. His replacement, Jay Presson Allen, later told him that "you just got bothered by the scene that was his reason for making the movie. You just wrote your ticket back to New York." Just as Hunter had been unaware of Stefano's earlier work on Marnie, Presson Allen was not informed that she was the third writer to work on the adaptation.

Casting

The role of Marnie became a sought-after role in Hollywood. In his book Hitchcock and the Making of Marnie, Tony Lee Moral revealed that a studio executive at Paramount Pictures suggested actress Lee Remick to Hitchcock for the title role. Eva Marie Saint, star of Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959), and Susan Hampshire unsuccessfully pursued the role. Hitchcock also considered two other actresses who were, like Hedren, under his personal contract, Vera Miles and Claire Griswold, wife of director/actor Sydney Pollack. Instead, Hitchcock opted to use Tippi Hedren, a one-time model he had seen in a commercial for a diet drink in 1961, then cast successfully in The Birds. According to Hedren, he offered her the role of Marnie during filming of The Birds. Hedren told writer Moral that she was "amazed" that Hitchcock would offer her this "incredible role", calling it a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity". In 2005, more than 40 years after the film's release, Hedren declared in an interview that Marnie was her favorite of the two films she made with Hitchcock, because of the intriguing, complex, challenging character that she played.

Male lead Sean Connery had been worried that being under contract to Eon Productions for both James Bond and non-Bond films would limit his career and turned down every non-Bond film Eon offered him. When asked what he wanted to do, Connery replied that he wanted to work with Alfred Hitchcock, which Eon arranged through their contacts. Connery also shocked many people at the time by asking to see a script; something Connery did because he was worried about being typecast as a spy and he did not want to do a variation of North by Northwest or Notorious. When told by Hitchcock's agent that Cary Grant did not ask to see even one of Hitchcock's scripts Connery replied, "I'm not Cary Grant." Hitchcock and Connery got on well during filming. Connery also said that he was happy with the film, "with certain reservations."

Marnie became a milestone for several reasons. It was the last time a "Hitchcock blonde" would have a central role in one of his films. It was also the final occasion when he would work with several of his key team members: director of photography Robert Burks, who died in 1968; editor George Tomasini, who died soon after Marnie's release, and music composer Bernard Herrmann, who was fired during Hitchcock's next film, Torn Curtain (1966), when Hitchcock and Universal studio executives wanted a more contemporary "pop" tune for the film. Hitchcock had noticed a strong similarity between Herrmann's score for Joy in the Morning and Marnie and believed Herrmann was repeating himself. Herrmann's music for Marnie included excerpts in his special album for Decca Records. Lyrics were written to Herrmann's theme that were to be sung by Nat King Cole.

Marnie continues to have its admirers. Actress Catherine Deneuve indicated that she would have loved to have played Marnie. Actress Naomi Watts dressed up as Hedren's Marnie (whose outfits were by Edith Head) for the March 2008 issue of Vanity Fair magazine.

Although they played mother and daughter, Latham (42) was only eight years older than Hedren (34); however in the script the mother character was only 15 years older than the daughter character.

Filming

In a making-of documentary for the DVD release, unit manager Hilton A. Green explains that shooting had been scheduled to begin on November 25, 1963, but had to be postponed because the nation was in mourning for John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated three days before.

Reception

Marnie received positive reviews from critics and audiences, earning an 82% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The film was a moderate box office success; it grossed $7 million in theatres on a budget of $3 million. In North America, it earned estimated rentals of $3,250,000. Marnie was the 22nd highest-grossing film of 1964.

In a making-of documentary on the DVD, Robin Wood, author of Hitchcock's Films Revisited, discusses the special effects of the film as having their roots in German Expressionism:

[Hitchcock] worked in German studios at first, in the silent period. Very early on when he started making films, he saw Fritz Lang's German silent films; he was enormously influenced by that, and Marnie is basically an expressionist film in many ways. Things like scarlet suffusions over the screen, back-projection and 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 the 2012 Sight & Sound poll of the greatest films ever made, Marnie received nine total votes – six from critics and three from directors.