Marnie

1964 "The more he loved her . . . The more she hated him . . . For trying to unravel her secret!"
7.1| 2h10m| PG| en| More Info
Released: 17 July 1964 Released
Producted By: Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
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Marnie is a thief, a liar, and a cheat. When her new boss, Mark Rutland, catches on to her routine kleptomania, she finds herself being blackmailed.

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Director

Alfred Hitchcock

Production Companies

Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions

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Marnie Audience Reviews

Perry Kate Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
Inmechon The movie's only flaw is also a virtue: It's jammed with characters, stories, warmth and laughs.
Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki Mark (Sean Connery) blackmails a kleptomaniac into marrying him, and then not only forces himself on her, but also forces her to confront her past, and learn why she is so terrified of the colour red.Marnie, the character, is damaged goods.Marnie, the film, is damaged goods also.It's a character-driven story, but every character is either unlikeable, or uninvolving. Marnie is a good, but not *great* Hitchcock flick, and, especially at that time, coming right after things like Psycho, and The Birds, and North By Northwest, and Vertigo, good wasn't good enough. A lot of fans probably were not expecting a more low key, subtle, psychological romance thriller, which is what we got with Marnie. No elaborate chases on My. Rushmore, no killer with split personalities. It was too much of a departure for some. While it is a beautiful looking, well filmed effort (excluding some atrocious backdrops, which occasionally look like a painting one might see in a dentist's office) its pacing also lags, and Sean Connery (in a hideous looking hairpiece) is just simply there. He's not bad here, but he seems to be miscast to me, like he was given the role in hopes plot a James Bond/ Hitchcock crossover success.Marnie is still worthwhile, but not a film I am in any hurry to rewatch, and not a good starting point for someone not already a fan of Hitchcock.
JoeKulik "Marnie" is #14 in my current Hitch marathon, and EASILY the best IMO. As a film fan the #1 thing by which I judge a film is it's storyline --- Is it coherent and believable? For me, EVERYTHING Else is just "icing on the cake". I view a film primarily to hear "a good yarn". In THAT Respect, many of Hitch's films don't impress me very much. Although he was a skilled director in MANY Ways, it's becoming apparent to me that he wasted his directorial abilities on A Lot of sub-par screenplays. Giving Hitch the benefit of the doubt, I suspect that he didn't have total control of the filmmaking process, particularly the selection of screenplays. It seems to me that he was forced to accept the screenplays that were handed down from a higher level of the filmmaking world.In any case, at this point, I would judge "Marnie" to have the most coherent & believable screenplay of all the Hitch films I've viewed so far. Moreover, it is the most compelling -- I was really got "sucked into" this story.As someone with a BA/MA in Psychology, & who had a 30 year career as a counselor, I have considered filmmakers' attempts to use Psychology as some sort of "angle" in their films to Always Be pathetic, laughable, and VERY Inaccurate. I can honestly say that "Marnie" is the MOST Technically Accurate film that I've ever viewed in terms of it's portrayal of mental illness & psychotherapy. This VERY Well Written screenplay PLUS Hitch's Brilliant Directing also took what could be a dry, mundane, & boring treatment of a mentally ill woman & her recovery at the hands of a knowledgeable husband & turned it into a Dramatic Masterpiece that is coherent, engaging, & very believable.That this film didn't win a ton of film awards is just further confirmation for me of how PHONY film awards really are.
ElMaruecan82 If you ask anyone who's vaguely familiar with the name of Hitchcock about the first titles that come to mind, you might get "Psycho", "The Birds", "Rear Window", "North by Northwest" or "Vertigo. Now if you asked the fans about their favorite movie, you might get have more expert answers, such as "Rope" "Shadow of a Doubt" or "Notorious", but whatever the titles are, chances are that the name "Marnie" won't be in the Top 5, not even the Top 10. Yet it's perhaps the film that explores the Hitchcockian themes with the most blatant defiance toward censorship, as if at that point of his career, after such a rich and unequaled filmography, Hitch decided to make his consummate psychological thriller in color, and where colors wouldn't just be ornament, but would put an emphasis on various psychological trauma.Why is "Marnie" so misunderstood then or disliked? It seems like the pathos of the film's titular protagonists has spilled over the film itself, as if "Marnie" became as unlikable as Marnie could be in the first act of the film, so, maybe this review will redeem what could be perceived as flaws or elements of lesser quality in comparison with Hitch' previous work. First, given the Master's prolixity, it's not the first movie a fan or discoverer will jump at, no Cary Grant, James Stewart or Grace Kelly. It has Sean Connery though at his prime after his first successful performance in "Dr. No" and there is Tippi Hedren who became a 'name' thanks to a bunch of flapping "Birds". The problem is that the rights of the novel were bought with Grace Kelly in mind. And Grace expressed her desire to work with Hitch again, much to his great pleasure. When everything was set, she declined the offer, because of family duties (at a time where Monaco was experiencing an internal crisis). Hitch abandoned the project.Convinced by Hedren's performance in "The Birds", he gave her the role of Marnie, but that was only the start of the many troubles the film would encounter. The second assigned writer (the first wrote the draft when Kelly was part of the project) didn't like the rape scene and thought it would be impossible to redeem the leading man after such an atrocious act, he tried to convince Hitch about it, and got himself fired for daring to remove the one scene that could be deemed as untouchable. The script went to a woman, Jay Presson Allen and strangely enough, she wasn't bothered by the rape, almost considering a honeymoon incident to put in the very psychological context of the main characters and this cold and neutral treatment allowed the viewer to immediately felt empathetic toward Marnie, who lacked a lot on that department. Tippi Hedren wouldn't even believe a woman could refuse to have sex with a hunk like Sean Connery, "it's called acting" answered Hitchcock. And he was right.The rape scene occurs halfway in the film, and at that specific moment, we already know about Marnie and Mark, the man who strangely fell in love with her. She's a compulsive liar and thief, she has many identities, she doesn't seem to feel any guilt about it, and she has a strange relationship with her mother (Louise Latham) carrying some sort of secret, one whose traumatic effect is to panic at the sight of the red color, or whenever she hears thunderstorms or tapping, another side effect is her obvious frigidity. The character of Marinie is probably the greatest source of inspiration for Hitchcock who, among many darlings, loved visual and subjective storytelling in order to convey fears or traumas (the white color in "Spellbound", the dolly zoom in "Vertigo") but with such a 'heavy' character, I'm almost satisfied Grace Kelly didn't have to play her, can you imagine Grace Kelly as a frigid and tormented woman? Actually, Tippi Hedren did a great job, conveying through her look and uncanny resemblance with Piper Laurie an instantly identifiable emotional vulnerability hidden behind some self-confidence. Now, why would a stud like Mark fall in love with her and not say, the beautiful Lil (Diane Baker, hired for her resemblance with Grace Kelly, and unrecognizable as the Senator in "Silence of the Lambs"). What's the attraction? I think it's precisely for these twisted characteristics that Mark is aroused, he finds Marnie fascinating and is driven by a double objective, to protect her and marry her. In his own way, he's not quite reasonable, and his zoology hobby can explain the way he perceives Marnie, a wounded animal. His eyes during the 'rape' scene don't suggest bestiality but possessiveness, a sort of obsession to respond to Marnie's own obsession; but that might ultimate cure her.The first writer regretted that the psychoanalyst from the book was removed by Hitchcock, who wanted to have two characters to carry the film as if he didn't believe Hedren would be enough, and actually, he's right because the mix of Marnie's pathos and Mark's hubris drive the story and Connery plays his part with a burning intensity that equals Cary Grant in "Notorious" and "Suspicion", and Laurence Olivier in "Rebecca". The old-school relationships are not always flattering and some special effects or matte backgrounds left a lot to desire, but the core of the story: Marinie and her relationship with Mark, her mother and her past, is worth the two hours of set-ups before one of Hitch' greatest climaxes. Even the "Psycho" sinned by too much on-the-nose explanations, but Hitch wouldn't have it in "Marnie" where the explanations are all visual, heart-pounding and disturbing.Still, "Marinie" didn't have the same resonance as the previous movies (none of the post-"Birds" films would actually), but given the sensitive material it handles, it seems to be more in line with what you see in today's movies and might be one of these cases where Hitchcock was ahead of his audience, another credit to his talent.
brchthethird This is the point at which I feel Hitchcock begins to lose his touch a bit, at least for the films I seen so far. MARNIE is somewhat of a departure in the type of film he had made his name doing, but even so, it contains themes that resonated through his body of work. The story is about Marnie (Tippi Hedren), a compulsive thief and liar who ends up marrying a man she robs. This was an intriguing premise, to say the least, and provided the opportunity for Tippi Hedren to play a more complex character than she had in THE BIRDS, but I don't think she was quite up to the task. Sean Connery was appropriately dashing in his role as Mark, the man she ends up falling for, but he didn't really have that much chemistry with Hedren, in my opinion. For me, there were individual moments or flashes of brilliance that worked rather than the film as a whole. In particular, the opening sequence where we are introduced to Marnie was well-done, and the scene where she robs Mark's company was the closest the film ever came to capturing the suspense for which Hitchcock is so well-known. The rest of it was a mixed bag. Some of the psychological elements were interesting by themselves, and in a few scenes, were well-utilized. However, the sledgehammer approach to Freudian themes and associations removed a lot of the mystique. It also didn't help that the explanation for Marnie's particular idiosyncrasies at the end was rather unsatisfying. Still, there were a number of things I did like. Tippi Hedren played cold and calculating rather well. Bernard Herrmann's score and main theme was very romantic and fit the character of Marnie. The film was also handsomely photographed, had great sets and costumes, and made good use of color. Overall, though, I feel like MARNIE has some poor pacing, is a little too long, and has as much trouble identifying what it wants to be as Marnie herself. Before I watched this, I took a look at the theatrical trailer, and even Hitchcock had difficulty (it seems) really pinning down what the film was (settling on 'sex mystery'). Certainly one of Hitchcock's lesser efforts, it still has some interesting parts despite the unevenness of it all.