MARNIE, YOU'RE ACHIN' MY LEG......DEFENDING HITCHCOCK'S LAST GRANDLY STRANGE ROMANCE.......

Marnie (1964)     Yep, you read the the title of this post correctly.....

                    We stand proudly with the "Marnie" lovers, even though the film's taken a beating over the years from film critics, bloggers and even many Hitchcock purists........

                    As strange and vexing as it is, we've been seduced and entranced by "Marnie" ever since we laid eyes on it as a teenager in 1964.

                     All these years later, we still never tire of watching it, even with all its perceived (and loudly trumpeted) faults, flaws and quirks.......

                    Maybe because we always fully embraced the film's deliberate (and in some instances, unintended) artificiality.......the obvious painted backdrop at the end of the matte-painted Baltimore street, Tippie Hedren's mechanical horse, the red flashing to signify the story's heavy reliance on psychological dysfunction and the insulated snow-globe world created by the almost exclusive use of studio-bound sets.....

                   All those things combine to make 'Marnie' what it is......the very last of Hitchcock's Grand Operatic fever dreams of sexual desire, sexual repression.......and sexual obsession.....(for both Hitchcock and his main characters)

                   'Marnie' stands as the last Hitchcock film done with the director's greatest collaborators, editor George Thomasini, cinematographer Robert Burks.....and most importantly (and sadly, given their legendary toxic split), master composer Bernard Herrmann. 

                     After 'Marnie', came the excruciating downward slide......the exhausted, dreary 'Torn Curtain', the woeful 'Topaz' populated with an entire cast of non-entities........and then finally a measure of redemption with "Frenzy" (in which Hitchcock's return to Britain re-stirred his long dormant creative juices)......finishing his career with the relatively sedate but still playful and clever "Family Plot"

                    So maybe that's why we treasure 'Marnie'. For us, it's the last of the all-out Hitchcock spectaculars, where his devotion to 'pure cinema', and his unmatched precise control of all the filmmaking arts reached its full flowering pinnacle. 

                    Let the pundits rage on......we forever deem 'Marnie' a 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS.

                    Agree?  Disagree?   We invite everyone to chime in with a comment or use our e-mail at thebeachedquill@gmail.com.  

                     (To paraphrase Marnie's mother....."we don't talk smart about Marnie in this house....."