Hitchcock's "Marnie" is at once a fascinating study of a sexual relationship and the master's most disappointing film in years.
Certainly the material is there. In his ladylike heroine, who changes her hairdo every time she cracks a safe, Mr. Hitchcock has as provocative a character as he has ever created. When Sean Connery, playing a singularly open-minded employer, catches the angelic Tippi Hedren with a suitcase full of company funds, he is naturally surprised -- and interested.
This Hitchcockian relationship, explored in sumptuous color, is reminiscent of such memorably maladjusted lovers as Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in "Notorious" or James Stewart and Grace Kelly in "Rear Window." And there's the rub.
Hitchcock has taken a pair of attractive and promising young players, Miss Hedren and Mr. Connery, and forced them into roles that cry for the talents of Grace Kelly and Cary Grant. Both work commendably and well -- but their inexperience shows.
Why, one wonders, did the most reliable of the "big star" directors -- a man whose least consequential stories have always had the benefit of the most illustrious players -- choose relative newcomers for such demanding assignments? Economy, perhaps? If so, Mr. Hitchcock must plead guilty to pound foolishness, for "Marnie" is a clear miss.
Nor is the casting -- which extends to astonishingly inadequate acting in subordinate roles -- its only problem. For once, the best technician in the business has faltered where he has always been strongest -- in his style. Not only is "Marnie" burdened with the most glaringly fake cardboard backdrops since Salvador Dali designed the dream sequences for "Spellbound," but the timing of key suspense scenes is sadly askew. Mr. Hitchcock has always been a trickster, but sleight of hand is spoiled when the magician lets the trickery show.
Curiously he has also settled for an inexplicably amateurish script, which reduces this potent material to instant psychiatry -- complete with a flashback "explanation scene" harking back to vintage Joan Crawford and enough character exposition to stagger the most dedicated genealogist. Poor Diane Baker, gratuitously inserted as a mystifying "menace," does nothing more than enunciate imitation Jean Kerr witticisms ("I'm queer for liars") while swirling about in Hollywood hostess gowns. At one point, just to make sure no one misunderstands Marnie's problem, the script provides the title of her lover's bedside reading matter -- "Sexual Aberrations of the Criminal Female." Get it?
A strong suspicion arises that Mr. Hitchcock is taking himself too seriously -- perhaps the result of listening to too many esoteric admirers. Granted that it's still Hitchcock -- and that's a lot -- dispensing with the best in acting, writing and even technique is sheer indulgence. When a director decides he's so gifted that all he needs is himself, he'd better watch out.
