Alfred Hitchcock began developing the film adaptation of Winston Graham's novel Marnie in 1961. He commissioned Joseph Stefano, the screenwriter of Hitchcock's recently released Psycho, to work on the script. Stefano made extensive notes and wrote a 161-page treatment.[2] The director's first choice to play the title role, Grace Kelly, by then Princess Grace of Monaco, withdrew from the project when the citizens of Monaco objected to her appearing in a film, especially as a sexually disturbed thief. Also, when Kelly married Prince Rainier in 1956, she had not fulfilled her contract with MGM, which could have prevented her from working for another studio. As a consequence of Kelly's departure from the film, Hitchcock put it aside to work on The Birds (1963).[2]

After completing The Birds, Hitchcock returned to the Winston Graham adaptation. Evan Hunter, who had written the screenplay for The Birds, developed Marnie with Hitchcock, and wrote several drafts. Hunter was unhappy with the rape scene in the original novel, as he felt the audience would lose sympathy for the male lead. The director, however, was enthusiastic about the scene, describing to Hunter how he intended to film it.

Hitch held up his hands the way directors do when they're framing a shot. Palms out, fingers together, thumbs extended and touching to form a perfect square. Moving his hands toward my face, like a camera coming in for a close shot, he said, "Evan, when he sticks it in her, I want that camera right on her face".[3]

Hunter wrote a draft containing the rape scene but also wrote an additional, substitute sequence, which he pleaded with Hitchcock to use instead. Hunter was dismissed from the project on 1 May 1963.[4] His replacement, Jay Presson Allen, later told him that "you just got bothered by the scene that was his reason for making the movie. You just wrote your ticket back to New York."[3][5] Just as Hunter had been unaware of Stefano's earlier work on Marnie, Presson Allen was not informed that she was the third writer to work on the adaptation.[6]

According to royal biographer Craig Brown, Hitchcock offered Princess Grace the title role in March 1962, and she accepted; but in Monaco, the reaction to the announcement was categorically negative. "Monegasques did not like the idea of their princess being filmed kissing another man," Brown wrote. "Little did they know that Hitchcock also had plans for him to rape her." Grace's announcement that she would donate her $800,000 fee to Monaco charities did nothing to appease the critics, and she dropped out of the project in June 1962.[7]

Following the news of Kelly's unavailability, the role of Marnie became a sought-after commission in Hollywood. Before Marilyn Monroe died, of probable suicide, in 1962, she expressed interest in playing the title character. “It’s an interesting idea,” Hitchcock admitted in an evasive manner to Variety's Army Archerd.[8] In his book Hitchcock and the Making of Marnie, Tony Lee Moral revealed that a studio executive at Paramount Pictures suggested actress Lee Remick to Hitchcock for the title role. Hitchcock also considered two other actresses who were, like Hedren, under his personal contract, Vera Miles and Claire Griswold, wife of director/actor Sydney Pollack. Eva Marie Saint, star of Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959), and Susan Hampshire unsuccessfully pursued the role as well. In the end, Hitchcock opted to use Tippi Hedren, a one-time model he had seen in a commercial for a diet drink in 1961, then cast successfully in The Birds. According to Hedren, he offered her the role of Marnie during filming of The Birds. Hedren told writer Moral that she was "amazed" that Hitchcock would offer her this "incredible role", calling it a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity". In 2005, more than 40 years after the film's release, Hedren declared in an interview that Marnie was her favorite of the two films that she made with Hitchcock, because of the intriguing, complex, challenging character that she played.[9]

Male lead Sean Connery had been worried that being under contract to Eon Productions for both James Bond and non-Bond films would limit his career and turned down every non-Bond film that Eon offered him. When asked what he wanted to do, Connery replied that he wanted to work with Alfred Hitchcock, which Eon arranged through their contacts.[10] Connery also shocked many people at the time by asking to see a script; something Connery did because he was worried about being typecast as a spy and he did not want to do a variation of North by Northwest or Notorious. When told by Hitchcock's agent that Cary Grant did not ask to see even one of Hitchcock's scripts Connery replied, "I'm not Cary Grant."[11] Hitchcock and Connery got on well during filming. Connery also said that he was happy with the film "with certain reservations."[12]

Marnie became a milestone for several reasons. It was the last time a "Hitchcock blonde" would have a central role in one of his films. It was also the final occasion when he would work with several of his key team members: director of photography Robert Burks, who died in 1968; editor George Tomasini, who died soon after Marnie's release, and music composer Bernard Herrmann, who was fired during Hitchcock's next film, Torn Curtain (1966), when Hitchcock and Universal studio executives wanted a more contemporary "pop" tune for the film.

Marnie continues to have its admirers. Actress Catherine Deneuve indicated that she would have loved to have played Marnie.[13] Actress Naomi Watts dressed up as Hedren's Marnie (whose outfits were by Edith Head) for the March 2008 issue of Vanity Fair magazine.[14]

Although they played mother and daughter, Latham (42) was only eight years older than Hedren (34). In the script, the mother character was only 15 years older than the daughter character.

In a making-of documentary for the DVD release, unit manager Hilton A. Green explains that shooting had been scheduled to begin on November 25, 1963, but had to be postponed because the nation was in mourning for John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated three days before.

Hitchcock had noticed a strong similarity between Herrmann's score for Joy in the Morning and Marnie and believed that Herrmann was repeating himself.[15] Herrmann's music for Marnie included excerpts in his special album for Decca Records. Lyrics were written to Herrmann's theme that were to be sung by Nat King Cole.

Contemporary reviews were mixed. Eugene Archer of The New York Times wrote a lukewarm assessment, calling it "at once a fascinating study of a sexual relationship and the master's most disappointing film in years." Archer's main criticisms were "an inexplicably amateurish script" and the casting of "relative newcomers" Hedren and Connery in roles that "cry for the talents of Grace Kelly and Cary Grant."[16] A review in Variety wrote that the opening was slow, but once it got going Hitchcock's story "generally keeps the action fairly fast-paced—provided audience can overlook certain puzzling aspects, such as why the lady became a thief—and gets strong performances from his two stars and other cast members."[17] Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "As a story it seems naggingly improbable and, as drama, a nightmare from which the spectator constantly pulls away, struggling to wake up in a less disordered universe. No question, though, that it is at least fitfully effective."[18] Edith Oliver of The New Yorker called the film "an idiotic and trashy movie with two terrible performances in the leading roles, and I had quite a good time watching it. There is something bracing about Hitchcock at work, even when he is at his worst."[19] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that the film "opens quite brilliantly," but that "things get out of hand" after the marriage, "with both leading players floundering badly as Hitchcock piles up his demands on them." The review suggested that "the trouble seems to be that the film falls between the two stools of straight suspense (what is Marnie's secret?) and the full-dress character study that would only have been possible with a more experienced actress."[20]

Marnie currently holds an 83% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 40 reviews.[21]

The film was a moderate box office success; it grossed $7 million in theatres[1] on a budget of $3 million. In North America, it earned estimated rentals of $3,250,000.[22] Marnie was the 22nd highest-grossing film of 1964.

In a making-of documentary on the DVD, Robin Wood, author of Hitchcock's Films Revisited, discusses the special effects of the film as having their roots in German Expressionism:

[Hitchcock] worked in German studios at first, in the silent period. Very early on when he started making films, he saw Fritz Lang's German silent films; he was enormously influenced by that, and Marnie is basically an expressionist film in many ways. Things like scarlet suffusions over the screen, back-projection and backdrops, artificial-looking thunderstorms—these are expressionist devices and one has to accept them. If one doesn't accept them then one doesn't understand and can't possibly like Hitchcock.

In the 2012 Sight & Sound poll of the greatest films ever made, Marnie received nine total votes—six (out of 846) from critics and three (out of 358) from directors.[23][24]

Marnie has been described as a neo-noir film by some authors.[25]

• List of American films of 1964

Notes

Bibliography

• Broccoli, Albert R.; Zec, Donald (1999). When the Snow Melts: The Autobiography of Cubby Broccoli. Trans-Atlantic Publications.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• De Rosa, Steven (2001). Writing with Hitchcock: The Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and John Michael Hayes. Faber and Faber. ISBN 0571199909.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Gottlieb, Sidney; Brookhouse, Christopher, eds. (2002). "An Interview with Evan Hunter". Framing Hitchcock: Selected Essays from the Hitchcock Annual. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0814330614.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Hunter, Evan (1997). "Me and Hitch". Sight & Sound. British Film Institute. 7 (6): 25–37. ISSN 0037-4806.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Moral, Tony Lee (2017) [2013]. Hitchcock and the Making of Marnie. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1442214330.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Smith, Steven C. (1991). A Heart at Fire's Centre: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520229396.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Spoto, Donald (1983). The Dark Side of Genius. Ballantine Books.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

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• Marnie at the American Film Institute Catalog
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