The Times (09/Jul/1964) - Hitchcock Brings It Off Again: Marnie

(c) The Times (09/Jul/1964)

keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Bernard Herrmann, Leicester Square, London, Marnie (1964), Sean Connery, Spellbound (1945), The Birds (1963), Tippi Hedren, Under Capricorn (1949), Winston Graham

Hitchcock Brings It Off Again

From Our Film Critic

The trouble with being so sensible as Mr. Alfred Hitchcock about the theory of film-making and such attendant problems as the proper use of actors and stars is that people are likely to start asking a lot of awkward questions when you seem not to be putting your eminently sound principles into practice.

The main difficulty with Marnie is that the story — which concerns a compulsive thief, with a psychologically mixed-up part — really calls either for a star, one of those great larger-than-life personalities who demand that we believe in them whatever the part they are playing, or for an expressive, resourceful actress. Miss Tippi Hedren, Mr. Hitchcock's discovery of The Birds, is good-looking and assured, but she is really neither a star nor an actress of much range; and consequently Mr. Hitchcock has to stop in his direction to some devices straight out of Griffith (the wild will-she-won't-she cross-cutting and zooming in and out from the money in the climactic temptation scene, for instance) in order to convey somehow what, his central player patently should be conveying and is not.

Given this basic misfortune, though, the film manages remarkably well. To begin with, its story, based on a novel by Mr. Winston Graham, is gripping and very well told, without the imbalances and irrelevancies of The Birds. It is easy to see why the plot-outline should have taken Mr. Hitchcock's fancy: it is essentially Spellbound turned inside out, with this time a male psychiatrist (amateur) fighting to save the female patient he loves, and once more a traumatic experience in childhood to be uncovered in the final settling of accounts. Moreover, the film has plenty of material for the nuttier French Hitchcock enthusiasts: a dash of amour fou in the hero's obsessive devotion to a beloved he knows from the outset to be almost impossible; lots and lots about the crucial word which can set free (shades of Under Capricorn) and the exchange of culpability.

All in all a field-day for enthusiasts, in fact, and over two hours of very glossy entertainment for anyone else. As Marnie's husband-cum-psychiatrist Mr. Sean Connery escapes quite effectively from the James Bond stereotype, and Miss Hedren has at least the right physical qualifications for her role. The surroundings in which the action takes place are, unexpectedly again after the hep-ness of Mr. Hitchcock's recent work, almost prewar in their bland acceptance of studio-built exteriors — the set of the street in which Marnie's mother lives is like something Trauner might have cooked up for Carné in the good old days — and Mr. Bernard Herrmann's surging, emotional score and the straightforward, classily printed credits all convey the same reassuring image. So much so that even the film's absurdities are rather endearing; perhaps after all it is not really so important to consider little details like why, if Marnie comes over all funny every time she see the colour red, she can apparently manage nevertheless to apply her own lipstick every day without a qualm. In this good old Hitchcock dream world cool acceptance of such things is all part of the game.