“That old transference of guilt theme so beloved of Hitchcock”: Marnie reviewed in 1964
Upon release, Alfred Hitchcock’s follow-up to The Birds disappointed our critic, who lamented “floundering” performances and “technical roughness”.
Marnie is the part with which Hitchcock hoped to tempt Grace Kelly back to the screen; and one can see what she might have made of the ice cold, perfect secretary exterior, masking the torments of the damned. In the event, Hitchcock cast his “discovery” of The Birds, ‘Tippi’ Hedren; and there is something almost brutal in the way he ruthlessly drives his inexperienced leading lady at the hurdles of this far from easy part.
The film opens quite brilliantly: close-up of a big yellow bag held under a girl’s arm; a pull back by the camera to show us the back view of a brunette, with bag and luggage, walking down a long station platform; a brief flash to the office, sardonically to establish the circumstances of the theft; then the girl’s arrival at an hotel (with corridor glimpse of Hitchcock), the quick transfer of objects from one case to another, the spilling of cash out of the yellow bag, and then the hair dye dissolving in water, and the emergence from the wash-basin of a blonde ‘Tippi’ Hedren. This is fast, intriguing, involving: a superbly economical and confident introduction.
After it, everything moves along smoothly, with that careful blocking in of groundwork which marks most of Hitchcock’s recent films: the visit to the mother culminates in a dire and sinister image, of her clumping downstairs in the dark with her stick; the office routine is amusingly laid out, leading up to the mechanics of the theft. Even if there are over-emphatic touches (the screen suffused with red whenever Marnie has one of her turns), everything seems set fair.
From the marriage on, however, things get out of hand, with both leading players floundering badly as Hitchcock piles up his demands on them. Diane Baker does nicely as the malicious Lil, and there are the odd Hitchcock flourishes to be enjoyed along the way, but fundamentally the trouble seems to be that the film falls between the two stools of straight suspense melodrama (what is Marnie’s secret?) and the full-dress character study that would only have been possible with a more experienced actress.
By the last half-hour, the melodramatic whips are out and everyone seems under pressure. In her husband’s office, Marnie’s hand reaches out for the money in the safe, can’t touch it, and Hitchcock zooms crudely in and out on shots of the piled up dollar bills. Arrival on mother’s slum doorstep in a pelting thunderstorm; heroine cowering against the wall, speaking in a little girl voice; then into the flashback, with mother (aged for these scenes, by the film’s chronology, about 21) looking like some raddled Blanche Du Bois. The end gives us, sure enough, that old transference of guilt theme so beloved of Hitchcock’s Cahiers admirers; but in the circumstances it seems hardly enough. There are some surprising technical roughness in the film (obvious moments of back projection; Forio’s fatal crash); and also some surprises in the view of the American landed gentry, calling each other “old boy” and “old girl”, fussing over their tea and riding to hounds.