As a result, I thought that now, during this time of uninteresting drudgery, I would do well to return to Project Hitchcock. To that end, I went to the library and checked out MarnieAs must no doubt be apparent to the one person who reads this blog, it has been a while since I posted an entry. “Why?” You may ask. And I, in turn, am forced to reply “because, currently, my life is a festering morass of putrescent boredom”. Yes, I have a collection of sw33t tunez to listen 2, but, after listening to “Kto Esli Ne Ya” and “Hurt” for literally* the four hundredth time, even tATu and Johnny Cash lose their lustre.
But, pathetic though my life is at the present time, I refuse to be cowed and, in my moment of need, I turned to the one man I knew could provide me with suitable journal material.
No, not Matt Drudge.
No, not Humphrey Bogart.
No, not a feral Barry Pepper.
Rather, I speak of Alfred Hitchcock and more importantly, his festering morass of putrescent work which is as much a bane of my existence as the derivative schlock Sam Raimi turns out.
It has been over three months since I watched my last Hitchcock movie, and, though my blood pressure has no doubt benefited, my conscience has pained me. One of my goals in life is to watch each and every movie Alfred Hitchcock foisted on the world and discover for myself exactly how many of them are actually good**. An admirable goal as you no doubt all agree, but, though I have done much toward the completion of my goal I have, of late, been slipping.
As a result, I thought that now, during this time of uninteresting drudgery, I would do well to return to Project Hitchcock. To that end, I went to the library and checked out Marnie
This 1964 movie tells the tale of a beautiful, young kleptomaniac named Marnie and her interaction with Mark, a man with a somewhat creepy knight-in-shining-armor complex. When Mark (played by a toupee-wearing Sean Connery) catches Marnie (played by Grace Kelly look-a-like Tippi Hedren) stealing from his company he doesn’t report her to the police but instead coerces her into marrying him and justifies his actions to himself by claiming that he wants to figure out why she feels compelled to steal and to help her overcome her problems. Once married, he finds out that her problems involve more than simply a penchant for walking out with the company’s payroll; she is, in fact, terrified of men and sex, which makes the honeymoon less than satisfying...until he rapes her in one of the most poorly directed sex scenes I have ever watched.
The couple returns home where Sean aka Mark continues his quest to find out why his wife is so screwed up (insert sex joke here). Matters are complicated by the fact that the sister of Mark’s first (now dead) wife lives at his home, is desperately in love with him, and is extremely pissed off that he married Tippi. In true spurned lover fashion she makes life miserable for Marnie and eventually brings our beleaguered heroine to the attention of other business men whom she stole from--business men who can’t coerce her into marriage and therefore have no reason not to turn her over to the police.
Needless to say, everything all works out in the end. Mark helps Marnie recover repressed memories from her early childhood, and the mere fact that she now knows why she fears sex and has a compulsion to steal means that she no longer fears sex or has a compulsion to steal.
Maybe it was the fact that I was so bored, but I found myself actually liking the movie. Yes, Mark was creepy, but he was played by Sean Connery which means that, at the least, he was easy on the eyes. Yes, it was fairly obvious why Marnie had the phobias and compulsions she did, but it was still fun watching Mark figure out why. In my opinion, the writing was fairly good; the plot flowed and the characters made sense.
Of course, none of that alters the fact that Hitchcock’s directing style was still as distracting as ever. I suppose he could have made Marnie’s aversion to the colour red a little more obvious....Actually, no--no he couldn’t. Nor could he have made the thunderstorms any more over the top or have tilted the cameras needlessly in a more distracting manner. And of course, there is not one way in which he could have filmed the sex/rape scene in a more stilted and amateurish fashion.
For the life of me I will never understand why people think that he was such a great director. Although I am not a director, I have watched many a movie so I think I’m entitled to some type of opinion on the art of filmmaking, and I personally believe that the way a film is directed ought to help bring the audience into the story. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the direction should always be unobtrusive, but, if the directing calls attention to itself it should do so in a manner that captures the spirit of the film. For example, the directing in The Matrix was very obvious, but by being so it actually helped draw the audience further into the movie by reminding them that most of the film took place in a world of the mind where physical laws did not necessarily apply.
Hitchcock, on the other hand, draws attention to his directing with tilted cameras, awkward cuts, and, at times, bizarre camera movements that seem to serve no noticeable function. The end result is that I, at least, am routinely disconnected from the story and the characters because I’m focusing on his latest jarring directorial decision.
But, I guess that’s Hitchcock for you.
In conclusion, substandard directing aside, I found this movie enjoyable and have rated it an 11 on Jessica’s Personal and Not-Fully-Explained Rating Scale of Hitchcockian Movie Fair, which I have done for the following reasons.
I found Mark interesting from a psychological perspective +3
I found Marnie interesting from a psychological perspective +2
I found Mark delicious from a physical perspective +5
The directing was distracting at best -4
But, it’s Hitchcock so I’ve learned to live with it 0
It helped fill up a boring afternoon +3
It didn’t feature any out of control carousels +2
No it’s not as good as Rebecca or Rear Window, but then again no other Hitchcock movie ever will be. I does however sit on the second tier of Hitchcock’s somewhat rickety dais along with such classics as Psycho, Suspicion, and Dial M. For Murder.
Footnotes
*And by “literally” I mean figuratively. Back
Copyright 2005 Jessica Menn
**The answer so far? Not many. Back