Home > VHS > Directors > Marnie

A very good character study of a frigid, kleptomaniac with a love triangle thrown in to boot. Tippi Hedren is much better in this one than in "The Birds".

Marnie starring Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery is a deeply disturbing drama directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Hedren is completely captivating in the title-role, she is so much more effective in this film than The Birds. I won't give away the ending but expect a creepy and complexed climax. This movie isn't considered a Hitchcock classic but it's definitely worth a viewing, enjoy!

Good classic Hitchcock film that never loses it's appeal. Why can't all movies have the class that these older films possess? You know there is a romantic quality in the story line without having to endure sexual scenes that are unnecessary. Plan on getting more of these types of films for the family!!

Oh, Marnie, such a wonderful film. Tippi Hedren is wonderful and dynamic as the lead in this film, with a very capable and convincing support crew of Diane Baker and Sean Connery--all this with Alfred Hitchcock directing.

I have always enjoyed this film of lying, thieving, psychological childhood trauma, frigidity, and suspense. In fact, I cannot understand why some people dislike this film. Furthermore, I do not understand why this is not considered one of his greatest films (although there are so many greats it is easy to see how some films get lost in the shuffle).

The story is about a troubled woman, who we meet right after an inside heist job. From there, we meet her disgruntled mother and learn that their relationship might have a lot to do with Marnie's antisocial and criminal behavior. The story really takes off when she is hired for another job and meets the handsome and wealthy Mark Rutland. He notices her instantly and begins to take considerable interest in her. This and his expertise in female animal abnormal behavior makes for an interesting continuation.

I highly recommend this film, although I could see how the psychoanalysis driven ending could turn some folks off.

After his back to back commercial and critical triumphs of Psycho and The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock decided to go `interior.' By that, I mean he decided to get unfortunately Freudian in his approach to crime, as he had throughout his career. Unfortunately, all but a few of his films suffer from their reliance on the outmoded and simplistic approaches to psychology that he employed. One of them was Marnie, his 1964 color follow up to the two terrific films mentioned at the start, starring his The Birds female lead, Tippi Hedren.
While the film flopped at the box office, latter day critics have tried to overcompensate for this fact by declaring the film a masterpiece. It's not, but it is a good, solid film that is better than originally thought. Its first hour is a nearly flawless study of a female thief, Marnie Edgar (Hedren)- aka Margaret Edgar, Peggy Nicholson, and Mary Taylor, who is sort of what the Janet Leigh character in Psycho may have become had she not been killed so early in that film. Her development is evenly paced and believable, never forced nor rushed. Then, when Marnie is caught by her boss, a widower named Mark Rutland (Sean Connery), and blackmailed into marriage, the film goes downhill, as Marnie's freakouts over the color red, highlighted by Hitchcock's over the top usage of red fade-ins and interludes (compare them with Ingmar Bergman's similar later technique in Cries And Whispers), lead to even greater and sillier melodrama.... All in all, Marnie is a flawed, but worthwhile, entry in the Hitchcock canon, and better than some more highly regarded earlier films. That said, it's a transition film which led the way to Hitchcock's final film of merit, 1972's Frenzy, and embodies all the best of Hitchcock, as well as his worst. In that sense, one could argue it is the Master Of Suspense's most Hitchcockian film, even if it is not too heavy on the suspense. In a more real world sense, it is a film that could have been great, yet also shows why Hitchcock was a flawed artist; thus a film that should be studied by students of the craft; a not too bad way to fail, after all.