The mise-en-scene tends toward a painterly abstraction, as Hitchcock employs powerful masses, blank colors, and studiously unreal, spatially distorted settings. Theme and technique meet on the highest level of film art.
At once a fascinating study of a sexual relationship and the master's most disappointing film in years.
60
Time Out
Time Out
It's as sour a vision of male-female interaction as Vertigo, though far less bleak and universal in its implications. That said, it's still thrilling to watch, lush, cool and oddly moving.
Marnie is the character study of a thief and a liar, but what makes her tick remains clouded even after a climax reckoned to be shocking but somewhat missing its point.
When an unknown director turns out a suspense melodrama as dreary and unconvincing as this, moviegoers revel in the thought of what it might have been if Hitchcock had done it. It is disconcerting to come away from Mamie feeling precisely the same way.