Analysis of Alfred hitchcock's "Marnie"
ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S "MARNIE"(1964)
https://youtu.be/166gQp1LcjQ
A masterful psychological thriller by Alfred Hitchcock Starring Tippi Hedren & Sean Connery. It’s a film of sexual violence and the aftermath .A dramatic yet logical representation of psychological development of a victim (Marnie). A developed psyche, Which is a phobic to few particular matters and disgust about man. The film is design in a cause-effect manner and various sub plots are added to justify it.
Marnie is the main character and the story surrounded by her. In simple word, the story is basically of a kleptomaniac. The film have two main plots, in the 1st plot “the art of stealing”, And the 2nd plot deal with the finding reason of the marnie’s psychic behaviour, which involve the presence of Mark rutland. He is a wealthy man physically attracted towards marnie but finally respond as a rescuer.
Here we discuss few scenes, by which we will try to explain the whole film.
From the first scene we have a suspicious overview on marnie, we came to know she is a thief and a master of disguise as the story developed.
In the scene of marnie’s home where for the first time we notice that the red flower give her some kind of paranoia
After that in the office scene when the red ink accidently fall onto her sleeve again the same kind of reaction to the incident .
After these two shot we predict that the red colour is the reason of her phobic behaviour.
In the Rutland’s office scene, most of the story explained or symbolically reproduced. In this scene Mark gave a introduction of his pet ‘Sophie” which is a jaguarundi, he added that he trained her to trust him. Here he actually denoted marnie as the jaguarundi and he wants her to trust him. In the same scene he gave a writings on “Arboreal Predators of the Brazilian Rain Forest”. In a brief discussion about the writings and the field of mark’s interest ,he point out the female instincts of predators which he referred as the criminal class of the animal world and he added, maximum no of predators are female.
In this scene Hitchcock use the camera proximity to express mark’s motif and his knowledge about marnie.
In the same scene after few shots we came to know about the 2nd factor of marnie’s phobia that is the thunder and lightning , which again merged with red colour and marnie’s reaction to the situation indicate that some past experience involve in this story .Hitchcock recreate the childhood moment of marnie in the office scene where the thunder and lightning give us the sense of the same environment, the broken tree branch flashed through the sealed window symbolised the foreign intruder in her childhood, when she was terrified of the happening, mark hold her into his arm to help her to relief but at the same time he was aroused and can’t stop himself to kiss her and touch her ,which was symbolical .As in the childhood marnie physically molested by a customer of her mother.
But still we are in dark about the red colour. Why marnie scream “The colours, stop the colours”.
for that we jumped forward to “Marnie’s nightmare in mark house scene .where we come to know about marnie’s mother involvement with some persons that marnie doesn’t want her to be with.there is the sound of knocking on door and her screaming for let her mother go and bagging not to hurt her.
In the horse killing scene , marnie was desperate to ease the pain of forio(horse) so she shoot it though forio means so much to her but to ease out its sufferings she have to trigger the gun . “There, there now”,A dramatic resolution to the scene. Hitchcock made this scene with tensed background sound, multiple ECU shots. Which give a reminiscing of past incident happened in marnie’s childhood when she killed the man and the blood of his head which hunt her every moment as the colour red.
In Bellour’s “The Analysis of Film” in the chapter 7 (psychosis, Neurosis, Preversion )he write, "the principle of classical film is well known ; the end must reply to the beginning; between one and the other something must be set in order; the last scene frequently recalls the first and constitutes its resolution.” What I learn from repeating the film for several times is the red colour is the beginning and the resolution of the film “Marnie”. The film starts with a kleptomaniac and ends with finding the reason behind it.
“Marnie” was hugely criticised for its content and poorly handled plot. According to an interview with Sean Connery (male lead character) he said that there were huge technical problem occurs during the shooting of Marnie. And also there was a problem of incomplete scripting which increase the complexity. Connery share a moment of the film where he asked Hitchcock about a problem related to the film in the reply Hitchcock said, “ohh, it’s just a movie”
https://youtu.be/xJPlx5MuivY
For readings
“Marnie” Is the Cure for Hitchcock Mania
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/marnie-is-the-cure-for-hitchcock-mania/amp
https://youtu.be/166gQp1LcjQ
A masterful psychological thriller by Alfred Hitchcock Starring Tippi Hedren & Sean Connery. It’s a film of sexual violence and the aftermath .A dramatic yet logical representation of psychological development of a victim (Marnie). A developed psyche, Which is a phobic to few particular matters and disgust about man. The film is design in a cause-effect manner and various sub plots are added to justify it.
Marnie is the main character and the story surrounded by her. In simple word, the story is basically of a kleptomaniac. The film have two main plots, in the 1st plot “the art of stealing”, And the 2nd plot deal with the finding reason of the marnie’s psychic behaviour, which involve the presence of Mark rutland. He is a wealthy man physically attracted towards marnie but finally respond as a rescuer.
Here we discuss few scenes, by which we will try to explain the whole film.
From the first scene we have a suspicious overview on marnie, we came to know she is a thief and a master of disguise as the story developed.
In the scene of marnie’s home where for the first time we notice that the red flower give her some kind of paranoia
After that in the office scene when the red ink accidently fall onto her sleeve again the same kind of reaction to the incident .
After these two shot we predict that the red colour is the reason of her phobic behaviour.
In the Rutland’s office scene, most of the story explained or symbolically reproduced. In this scene Mark gave a introduction of his pet ‘Sophie” which is a jaguarundi, he added that he trained her to trust him. Here he actually denoted marnie as the jaguarundi and he wants her to trust him. In the same scene he gave a writings on “Arboreal Predators of the Brazilian Rain Forest”. In a brief discussion about the writings and the field of mark’s interest ,he point out the female instincts of predators which he referred as the criminal class of the animal world and he added, maximum no of predators are female.
In this scene Hitchcock use the camera proximity to express mark’s motif and his knowledge about marnie.
In the same scene after few shots we came to know about the 2nd factor of marnie’s phobia that is the thunder and lightning , which again merged with red colour and marnie’s reaction to the situation indicate that some past experience involve in this story .Hitchcock recreate the childhood moment of marnie in the office scene where the thunder and lightning give us the sense of the same environment, the broken tree branch flashed through the sealed window symbolised the foreign intruder in her childhood, when she was terrified of the happening, mark hold her into his arm to help her to relief but at the same time he was aroused and can’t stop himself to kiss her and touch her ,which was symbolical .As in the childhood marnie physically molested by a customer of her mother.
But still we are in dark about the red colour. Why marnie scream “The colours, stop the colours”.
for that we jumped forward to “Marnie’s nightmare in mark house scene .where we come to know about marnie’s mother involvement with some persons that marnie doesn’t want her to be with.there is the sound of knocking on door and her screaming for let her mother go and bagging not to hurt her.
In the horse killing scene , marnie was desperate to ease the pain of forio(horse) so she shoot it though forio means so much to her but to ease out its sufferings she have to trigger the gun . “There, there now”,A dramatic resolution to the scene. Hitchcock made this scene with tensed background sound, multiple ECU shots. Which give a reminiscing of past incident happened in marnie’s childhood when she killed the man and the blood of his head which hunt her every moment as the colour red.
In Bellour’s “The Analysis of Film” in the chapter 7 (psychosis, Neurosis, Preversion )he write, "the principle of classical film is well known ; the end must reply to the beginning; between one and the other something must be set in order; the last scene frequently recalls the first and constitutes its resolution.” What I learn from repeating the film for several times is the red colour is the beginning and the resolution of the film “Marnie”. The film starts with a kleptomaniac and ends with finding the reason behind it.
“Marnie” was hugely criticised for its content and poorly handled plot. According to an interview with Sean Connery (male lead character) he said that there were huge technical problem occurs during the shooting of Marnie. And also there was a problem of incomplete scripting which increase the complexity. Connery share a moment of the film where he asked Hitchcock about a problem related to the film in the reply Hitchcock said, “ohh, it’s just a movie”
https://youtu.be/xJPlx5MuivY
For readings
“Marnie” Is the Cure for Hitchcock Mania
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/marnie-is-the-cure-for-hitchcock-mania/amp
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