Marnie "Marnie, la ladrona" (1964)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Tippi Hedren, Sean Connery, Diane Baker, Martin Gabel, Louise Latham, Alan Napier, Bruce Dern, Mariette Hartley.

Much more so than VERTIGO, which,even though it deals with one man's neurosis, is a classic "whodunit". Jimmy Stewart's coming to grips with his fear of heights at the end of VERTIGO is merely an icing of suspense on an otherwise well baked murder mystery. In MARNIE, on the other hand, Hitchcock deals with the deeper, darker side of Marnie's psycho-sexual illness. Mark Rutland's (Sean Connery)constant probing into Marnie's (Tippi Hedren) persona takes on the role of psychotherapy complete with word association games and sound cues that shake Marnie's subconscious. In one scene Rutland is even seen reading "Psycho-sexual Behavior in the Criminal Mind." Strange night-time reading material for a handsome, newly married businessman of a certain wealth. In the end, there is a complete pyscho-catharsis as Marnie remembers the traumatic night when as a child she killed the sailor (Bruce Dern), thus unleashing a lifetime of criminal psychosis. Hitchcock's direction is masterful in its depth of portrayal of Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams." The scene in which Marnie experiences a nightmare at the Rutland manse is a perfect example. As the dream begins, the set is that of her mother's house during a stormy night when her mother's clients came rapping on the door. Marnie awakens, however, in the plush bedroom of the Rutland residence. Hitchcock's camera takes us into the criminal unconscious and then exits into an opulent, satin covered reality gone psychotic. This insight helps us to see the troubled Marnie in a sympathetic light. Hedren's awesome acting talent underscores this as at times she emotes a little lost child persona. This is very true to character since emotionally, Marnie's development stopped that night when as a child attempted to save her mother. From the beginning of the film, Hedren's portrayal of Marnie is pregnant with a little girl's search for maternal love and approval. At the end of the film, Rutland's explanation of Marnie's life of theft as the compensatory behavior of an unloved child is simplistic and amateurish from a psychiatric viewpoint. However, it works for the audience Hitchcock is trying to touch, and it is reminiscent of the doctor's pedantic and sophomoric review of Norman's psychosis in PSYCHO, a horror film rife with simplistic freudian interpretation. On a deeper level, Hitchcock takes us on a journey through one woman's Electra Complex as Marnie's euthanasia of a horse with a broken leg symbolically foreshadows the final scene in which Marnie's new-found memory of the horrible night serves to "kill" her psychotic ties to her mother's past. Now in the paternal yet comforting arms of her husband, Mark, Marnie's life as a grown woman is sure to take a turn for the better. Her fears of going to prison are the only vestige to a child's traumatic past.