In the opening scene of Marnie, we see a woman with long, black hair, carrying a suitcase, walking through a train station.  Though we cannot see her face, yet we just know, somehow, that she must be beautiful.

Then the scene jumps to the office of one Mr. Strutt, who runs a tax-consulting firm, Strutt & Co., in New York.  He is played by Martin Gabel, who is only a character actor because he is not handsome. Rather, he is just ordinary in appearance.  And so it is that we are not surprised that the beautiful woman has taken advantage of this homely man, having robbed him.

He is being interviewed by two police detectives, and as an indication of just how much Strutt is irritated by what has happened, he states the amount stolen from him to the dollar, which is $9,967. (Adjusted for inflation, that would be just over $99,000 in 2023 dollars.)  The detectives ask him if he can describe the woman, who went by the name Marion Holland.  He does so: “Five feet five.  A hundred and ten pounds. Size eight dress.  Blue eyes. Black, wavy hair.  Even features. Good teeth.”

As he so describes her, his secretary rolls her eyes.  She knows well the influence that women like that can have over men like Mr. Strutt.  Then the detectives start chuckling as well.  One of them continues, noting that Miss Holland had been working for Strutt for four months.  He asks about her references.  Strutt begins hedging, as if trying to remember.  His secretary, through half-closed eyelids, says, “Oh, Mr. Strutt, don’t you remember?  She didn’t have any references at all.”

No surprise there.  As Aristotle said, “Beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of introduction.”

Once, while in a philosophy course I was taking, the professor quoted this line from Aristotle.  “Aristotle?” another student in the classroom interjected. “Didn’t they kill him?”

“No,” the professor replied, “that was Socrates.  And he was ugly.”

Anyway, about that time, a major client of Strutt shows up from Philadelphia, Mark Rutland, played by Sean Connery.  Connery had recently starred as the suave and sophisticated spy, James Bond, in Dr. No (1962) and From Russia with Love (1963), where his physical beauty made him irresistible to the women he met.

Strutt tells him that he was just robbed of almost $10,000.  “So I gathered,” Mark replies.  And then, showing no mercy, says, “By a pretty girl with no references.”

Strutt says he pointed her out to him the last time Mark was there, noting that Mark said at the time that Strutt was “improving the looks of the place.”

“Oh, that one,” Mark replies, “the brunette with the legs.”  Strutt comments, with irritation about how she acted so prim and proper, that she was always pulling her skirt down over her knees.

In the next scene, the brunette with the legs is entering a hotel room.  She puts everything that could be associated with Marion Holland into a gray suitcase, while putting a new wardrobe and the money she stole into a brown one.  It all reminded me of when another Marion, Marion Crane, switched outfits in a bedroom with a lot of stolen money lying on the bed in Psycho (1960).  And just as “Marion” in that movie was an anagram for “Normai,” similar to “Norma” and “Norman,” so here “Marion” is almost an anagram for “Marnie,” which is her real name, or rather, nickname, for her real name is Margaret Edgar.

She has several Social Security cards in her wallet with different names on them.  There would have been no difficulty about that when this movie was made.  Just previous to seeing this movie, I decided to get a Social Security card for myself.  I simply walked into the Social Security office and filled out a short form.  I had no identification, no driver’s license or birth certificate, for example, nor was the card itself supposed to be a form of identification once I had it.  Those were innocent times. Anyway, Marnie puts a Social Security card with her real name on it in the front section of the wallet.

She removes the black dye from her hair and becomes a blonde.  At the train station, she deposits the gray suitcase in a locker and then drops the key down the grate of a drain, taking only the brown suitcase with her.  She takes the train to Virginia, and then takes a hotel limousine to the Red Fox Inn, where she is known by her real name, and near Garrod’s, where she keeps her horse Forio stabled.

After riding her horse, she travels to Baltimore to visit her mother, which is apparently located on the waterfront, given the ship docked in the background.  As she gets out of the taxicab, we see little girls playing jump rope, singing a song that begins with, “Mother, Mother, I am ill.”  She knocks on a door, and a little girl opens it, a spoiled brat named Jessie, with whom Marnie does not get along, but whom her mother, Bernice (Louise Latham), babysits.

Marnie comes inside with some white chrysanthemums.  She turns to look at the vase and sees it is filled with red gladiolas.  Marnie has a strong, visceral reaction to those red flowers, insisting that they be removed and replaced with her white ones.  It is at this point that we know that this will be another Hitchcock movie with a Freudian theme.

Hitchcock’s most Freudian movie of all was Spellbound (1945).  Looking back, it is hard to believe how influential Freud was at that time, and still was to a certain extent when Marnie was made in 1964.  Even into the 1970s, you could walk into a bookstore and find over a dozen books by Freud. About fifteen years ago, just out of curiosity, I checked out the psychology section of a major bookstore.  There were no books by Freud on the shelf, just one little book about Freud, sitting there all by itself, looking a little sad. There were several books by Carl Jung, of course, but he appeals to a completely different set of readers.

One of the great things about Freud, as far as movies were concerned, is that repressed memories could be the basis of a mystery, something that happened in the past that is causing problems for someone in the present.  In Spellbound, there were two acts of repression for Gregory Peck, one in childhood, and one as an adult.  In Marnie, there is just one, as was usually the case.

While Marnie is at her mother’s, we get several clues to the Freudian mystery. In addition to the way the color red bothers her, we find out that both Marnie and her mother hate men.  “A decent woman,” Bernice says, “don’t have need for any man.”  There is a reluctance on the part of Bernice to show affection to Marnie, though she has no trouble doing so with Jessie.  Marnie asks her mother why she doesn’t love her, why she always moves away from her, avoiding physical contact, as if there was something wrong with her.  Marnie wonders if her mother believes that she gets her money by being a kept woman.  Then Marnie goes upstairs to take a nap, where she has a recurring dream, precipitated by the tapping of a window shade.  In her dream, her mother wants her to move, but Marnie doesn’t want to because it’s cold. Bernice wakes her up, just as in the dream.  She tells her supper is ready. Then Bernice slowly makes her way back down the stairs, descending with a limp and using a cane, on account of an accident she had a long time ago.

The next time we see Marnie, she has light brown hair.  Once again, she has a gray suitcase, the color of the suitcases she uses for a fake identity, so we figure she is about to embark on her next act of larceny. She spots an ad in the Philadelphia Inquirer for a payroll clerk.  It says references are needed, but she knows she has something better to offer than that.  By coincidence, the ad had been placed by Rutland & Co., a publishing company of which Mark is the owner.

At the office where she is to be interviewed by a Mr. Ward, he is just finishing up his interview with another woman for the same position.  That other woman appears to be in her late fifties and is referred to as Miss Blakely. When this movie was made, such women were called spinsters or old maids, and Miss Blakely matches the connotations.  Such a woman would not be given to foolishness but would be strictly business.  However, while she has the letters of recommendation, she has not the beauty.  In fact, she is quite unattractive.  So, we are not surprised that she doesn’t get the job.

Not that her appearance would have been a problem for Mr. Ward.  He is not like Strutt, for he thinks she would be perfect for the position.  However, Marnie, now going by the name of Mrs. Taylor, supposedly a widow, is sitting outside Ward’s office hoping to get that job, where she is spotted by Mark.  He seems to be trying to remember where he has seen her before, but he cannot quite place her, not even when she makes the characteristic gesture Strutt referred to of pulling her skirt down over her knees.

Mark is there to see Ward, who introduces him to Miss Blakely just as she is leaving.  Mark can barely conceal the feeling of revulsion he has at the thought of hiring a woman who looks like that.  He and Ward step into his office, where we gather that Mark says he wants “Mrs. Taylor” to be considered for the job. She is invited into Ward’s office.

While she is in the office, Mark realizes that she was the woman he saw at Strutt’s office.  He becomes amused as he listens to her explanation as to why she has almost no references.  And so, in addition to wanting her to get the position on account of her looks, his fascination with her criminal character further titillates him, leading him to overrule a bewildered Mr. Ward, who can’t believe Mark would want to hire a woman without the proper references when they could have had Miss Blakely.

After Marnie has settled into her new job, we again see indications of a repressed memory.  When a drop of red ink falls on her blouse, looking like a drop of blood, she panics and runs to the restroom to wash it off.  On another day, she agrees to work on Saturday to do some typing for Mark.  While in his office, a storm blows up.  The flashes of lightning alarm her, especially when the flashes turn red in her imagination.

We already figured that Mark didn’t really need any typing done, that he just wanted to get her alone for sexual purposes, and when she seems paralyzed by the storm, he takes advantage of the situation by kissing her.  One thing leads to another, and soon they are going to the racetrack together, after Mark finds out Marnie likes horses.  When she has a strong reaction to a jockey wearing a shirt with large red spots, Mark starts wondering, perhaps connecting it to the other ways in which she has been acting strange.

When the track closes, he brings her home to meet his father, who, unlike Mark, also likes horses and has several stabled on the grounds of his mansion.  Mark’s sister-in-law Lil (Diane Baker) is there as well. (Mark’s wife, Lil’s older sister, had died almost two years ago.)  She wants Mark for herself and thus regards Marnie as a rival.

Then Marnie makes her move, stealing the money out of the safe in Ward’s office, switching back to Margaret Edgar, and going back to Garrod’s to ride her horse Forio again.  But in the middle of her ride, Mark shows up.  She tries making up all sorts of stories, but eventually she finds out that he knew she was a thief all along.  He threatens to turn her over to the police, but since he has fallen in love with her, he offers her a way out.  She can marry him.

All right, we understood that Mark would prefer to have a beautiful woman like Marnie to be hired, rather than Miss Blakely, and we even understood why he might still be interested in her after realizing she had stolen the money from Strutt & Co.  But when he not only wants to marry her anyway, but also is willing to blackmail her into going along with it, we have to wonder about Mark too.

Marnie recalls that he is an amateur zoologist.  She thinks about Sophie, the jaguarundi he told her about that he trained to trust him, which for a jaguarundi, he says, is a lot.  She says, “You don’t love me.  I’m just something you’ve caught!  You think I’m some kind of animal you’ve trapped.”

“That’s right,” he says, “you are.  And I’ve caught something really wild this time, haven’t I?  I’ve tracked you and caught you, and by God, I’m gonna keep you.”

If we are sympathetic to what Mark is proposing, even regarding it as somewhat romantic, it is only on account of the fact that he is played by Sean Connery.  Suppose, however, that Mark had been played by Percy Helton.  In Wicked Woman (1953), for example, Helton is a pathetic character who lusts after Beverly Michaels.  She gets him to give her money, promising to go out with him, but when he subsequently pressures her for a date, she tells him she would never go out with him because he’s a “repulsive little runt.”  She is planning to run off with Richard Egan after he sells the bar he owns, cheating his wife out of her share of the money, but when Helton overhears their plan, he pressures Michaels into having sex with him.  That makes Helton not only pathetic, but despicable as well.  We would feel the same way were he to play the role of Mark Rutland, trying to force Marnie into marrying him.  It would give us the creeps, just as it gives us the creeps when we hear the story about how Alfred Hitchcock tried to coerce Tippi Hedren on the set of Marnie into having sex with him, threatening to ruin her career if she did not.

Mark and Marnie get married and go on a South Seas cruise for their honeymoon.  It is then that Mark finds out that Marnie cannot stand to have a man touch her. She had let him kiss her a few times, because she thought she could fake it, but when it comes to consummating the marriage, she cannot go through with it.  Mark becomes convinced that something happened to her when she was young, and he suggests that she see a psychiatrist, but she dismisses the idea, saying that when a man is rejected, he always says it’s the woman’s fault, that there must be something wrong with her mentally.

He promises not to touch her, and for the next few days, they seem to be getting along amicably. Little by little, however, Mark becomes angry that she still refuses to have sex with him.  So, one night he goes into the bedroom and tears Marnie’s nightgown off her, leaving her completely naked. He apologizes, but when she goes into a catatonic trance, Mark takes advantage of the situation and has sex with her. Though it is a clear case of marital rape, yet we forgive Mark for what he did because, well, it’s Sean Connery. Now, it was bad enough when, in Wicked Woman, Egan walked in just as Helton was kissing Michaels on the neck. But in Marnie, if it had been Percy Helton raping Tippi Hedren, people would have been getting out of their seats and leaving the theater.

The next morning, Marnie is gone.  Mark searches for her all over the ship, finally finding her face down in the swimming pool.  He pulls her out and resuscitates her, asking, “Why the hell didn’t you jump over the side?”

She replies, “The idea was to kill myself, not feed the damn fish.”

Of course, the real reason is that if she had jumped over the side, the movie would be over.  In any event, the honeymoon is over, and they return home. Mark brings Forio to her, and she looks at Mark with genuine affection for his having done so.

Meanwhile, Lil has been snooping and eavesdropping, finding out about Strutt and how Mark has secretly paid him off, and finding out that Marnie has a mother in Baltimore, a fact that she passes on to Mark. Mark in turn hires a private detective, from whom he gets the address of Marnie’s mother, and from whom he finds out something about a man being killed when Marnie was five years old.

One night, Marnie has that dream again, talking in her sleep.  Hearing her, Mark and Lil come into her bedroom and wake her.  After Lil leaves, Mark starts asking questions about that dream.  At first, she is cooperative, saying there are three taps, after which her mother wants her to move, but she doesn’t want to because it’s cold, and “they’ll hurt her.”  Mark asks who “they” are.  She says she doesn’t know, but there are noises.

When Mark asks about the noises, Marnie recovers from this weak moment and looks at him with a level gaze.  “You Freud, me Jane?” she asks.  When this movie was made, that snide remark was as much for the benefit of the audience as for Mark.  Although, as noted above, Freud was still being taken seriously at the time, audiences were becoming a little weary of Freudian themes in the movies.  A Freudian explanation for behavior could no longer be advanced with the same expectation of acceptance on the part of the audience that was possible when Spellbound was made.  It was necessary to have Marnie express some detachment from Freud, which would match a similar attitude on the part of the audience.

She is aware that Mark has been reading books on abnormal behavior and psychoanalysis.  Mark asks if she has read them, and she replies, “I don’t need to read that muck to know that women are stupid and feeble and that men are filthy pigs.”  Then she adds, “In case you didn’t recognize it, that was a rejection.”

Mark says he wants her to read them, saying, “Start with The Undiscovered Self.”  Why he would want her to read that, I don’t know.  Repressed memories from childhood are not the subject of that book.  I would have suggested Freud’s A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, but neither that nor any of the other books Mark has been reading are by Freud.  Perhaps Mark’s recommendation of this book by Carl Jung is also for the benefit of the audience, another way of establishing some distance from Freud.

Marnie asks him why he won’t just leave her alone, and he says, “Because I think you’re sick, ol’ dear.”  She sits up and replies:

I’m sick?  Well, take a look at yourself, ol’ dear.  You’re so hot to play Mental Health Week, what about you?  Talk about dream worlds!  You’ve got a pathological fix on a woman who’s not only an admitted criminal, but who screams if you come near her. So, what about your dreams, Daddy dear?

When Mark persists in encouraging her to read those books, she throws down the gauntlet:

You’re really dying to play doctor, aren’t you?  OK, I’m a big movie fan.  I know the games.  Come on. Let’s play.  Shall I start with dreams, or should we free associate?  Oh, Doctor, I’ll bet you’re just dying to free associate.  All right, you give me a word, and I’ll give you an association.

Not only does this further express a cynical regard for Freudian analysis, but it does so by making reference to the movies as well, movies in which she had once been part of the audience herself, thus assuring us that she is not some ingénue who has never seen movies like Spellbound.

All this having been established, the movie can now proceed to go full Freud without further apology. Probably not expecting much, Mark takes her up on the offer, giving her words for her to associate. At first, she is playful about the whole thing.  But then her own associations begin to bother her. When Mark says, “Black,” she says, “White,” as we expect.  But then he says, “Red!” and she repeats “White!” again and again, desperately turning away.  He grabs her, and she holds on to him, pleading with him to help her. This is a critical turning point, an essential step toward freeing her from her psychosis.

However, there is the additional problem of freeing herself from any criminal charges.  Lil maliciously invites Strutt and his wife to a big party being thrown at the Rutland estate.  Strutt recognizes Marnie, and she wants to make a run for it, but Mark figures he can coerce Strutt into keeping his mouth shut, and perhaps he can make restitution to others she has robbed as well. Because Strutt may come back the next day, he wants Marnie to ride in the hunt that has been scheduled so she will be out of the house.

Ah, the hunt!  What fun it must be ride on a horse, fashionably attired, behind a pack of hounds pursuing a fox.  When the fox is trapped, everyone other than Marnie is having a great time watching the fox being torn apart by the fangs of those hounds.  Marnie looks around, bewildered by all the happy, laughing faces she sees.  If only she were a normal, healthy human being like them, then she could enjoy the spectacle too.  Given her mental problems, however, she becomes distressed.  And then she sees the red coat being worn by one of the participants.  She has to get away, riding off at full gallop.  Forio clears fences with no problem, but when Marnie sees a brick wall that is too high, she tries to bring him to a stop, but is unable to do so.  She is thrown to the ground, and Forio’s leg is broken.  She has to shoot him.  As she does so, we see that look in her eyes and that little-girl tone in her voice that tells us when she under the influence of her past.

Once again, she decides to make a run for it.  She steals the keys to the office, intending to rob the safe again.  But she finds she cannot touch the money. Mark shows up.  He tells her they are going to see her mother.  She is afraid he will tell her mother about her crimes, but he says it is her mother who will do the talking.  It is Marnie who does the talking, however, regressing to her past, when Bernice tries to hit Mark, and they start struggling.

It turns out that Bernice was a prostitute.  Having only one bed, she would make Marnie get out of bed and sleep on the couch when a sailor came calling.  One night, having been moved to the couch, Marnie starts crying on account of the storm.  The sailor, played by Bruce Dern, comes out to quiet her.  But when he starts kissing her, Marnie doesn’t like it, and neither does Bernice.  She and the sailor start struggling. She tries to hit him with a poker from the fireplace, but the sailor falls on her, breaking her leg.  She calls to Marnie to help her.  Marnie picks up the poker and hits the sailor with it, killing him, the blood covering his white sailor suit.

Bernice thought it was a blessing from God that Marnie didn’t remember anything, and she resolved to become a better person.  She told the police she killed the sailor in self-defense.  Marnie and Bernice become reconciled.  As Mark and Marnie leave, she says she wants to stay with him.

I don’t how things are with psychoanalysis in real life, but in the movies, when the repressed memory is brought to the surface, the patient is completely cured. So, we figure Mark and Marnie will now be happily married, having a normal sex life.

But even if they don’t, they sure make a good-looking couple.