Monday, June 14, 2010

Marnie

Have you guys seen the Hitchcock film Marnie? It isn't as famous as The Birds, which also starred Tippi Hedren, or Psycho, but it is awesome. I like Hitchcock films in general just because they have beautiful cinematography and luscious scores, but some stand out to me more than others. Marnie is this beautiful, yet crazy chick who steals money from her temp jobs and then changes her look and gets a new job and does it all over again. She sends the money to her mother. She can keep her craziness under control unless she sees the color red. It throws her into a horrible panic attack (which I can understand, because I hate the color red in general- you won't see a stitch of it in my room or closet.) It reminds her of something terrible, but as the viewer you don't know what it is. She is also freaked out by thunderstorms and men in general. Aren't we all?




Sean Connery is one of her bosses and he catches her stealing. He blackmails her into marrying him, or else he will tell on her and have her thrown in jail. Nice.

She doesn't want to sleep with her "husband", but her makes her. She then tries to drown herself.


When she has her panic attacks, the screen goes red and the music gets all scary- I actually got scared watching this the other night. Frickin Hitchcock always gets me.

Despite her looniness, Marnie is very elegant, composed and refined, with beautiful hairstyles and clothing. Grace Kelly was going to take this part, but it went to Tippi (mother of Melanie Griffith in case you didn't know) because Grace had just married the crowned Prince of Monaco, and the country didn't think it would look good if she went back to acting.
Another thing about this movie was that they had to postpone it's first days of shooting because Kennedy had just been shot and the nation was in mourning.
Oh, and if you are curious as to the color red and thunderstorms- we find out at the end that Marnie's mother was getting it on with a sailor when she was little, and the sailor heard Marnie crying over the scariness of the thunderstorm. He tried to comfort her and Marnie's mother came in and thought he was trying to hurt her, so she attacked him. All hell broke loose and Marnie ended up stabbing the sailor with a fireplace poker or something, hence the sight of red blood during a thunderstorm.


Here is a scene from Marnie: