Hitchcock and the Making of Marnie by Tony Lee Moral

Author:Tony Lee Moral [Moral, Tony Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2013-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Critical Reception

Of course, at least we’re able to blame it on the French. I think Hitch would have loved all this. I think he would have adored it, but I think it would have made him giggle.

—Jay Presson Allen

Perceptions about a film can alter throughout time, reflecting changes in audience tastes and the cultural forces that determine how a film is received. The history of Hitchcock criticism parallels the evolution of film theory. Since its initial release in 1964, Marnie has been influenced by the auteur theory, the development of feminism arising from the work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, and the continual growth of Hitchcock scholarship, which includes controversial biographical legends of the director. Hitchcock himself treated critics with skepticism. “I think they are very human,” he remarked in an interview. “They’re subject to all kinds of human foibles and I think they mean very well. I won’t stress the word mean; I said they mean very well. They have their job to do and I have my job to do.”1 This chapter examines why Marnie was initially dismissed by the journalist critics and how its reputation only improved when it was embraced by scholars, at a time when the auteur theory and feminism became dominant in academic film studies.

The Reviews

On June 9, 1964, the Motion Picture Daily, the national newspaper of the entertainment industry, began the reviews promisingly:

In Marnie, the redoubtable Alfred Hitchcock has turned again to the psychological mystery genre—a type of film he had left to others in recent years. . . . Thanks to the craft of Hitchcock, the picture hypnotically arouses suspense and builds beautifully to the explosive climax. His work here, as always, offers a study in the art of film direction. The use of color photography is particularly effective. Exhibitors can usually count on Hitchcock for a winner, and Marnie is no exception.

A review in Film Daily on the same day offered similar appraisal: “A suspense mystery done in Hitchcock style. Nerve tingling. Good box office prospects. Smart cast.”

When Marnie opened midweek in England on July 8, the British film reviewers voiced their perception of Hitchcock’s growing pretentiousness. In their estimation, Hitchcock was a director who made entertaining thrillers, and the milestone of his success was his early British period, not the later American films. Their annoyance was ignited by Hitchcock’s interview that had just aired on the BBC intellectual Monitor arts program, in addition to persistent praise from the French critics. “Whatever has happened to Alfred Hitchcock?” asked the reviewer of the Evening News on July 9. “Has he been paddling too long in the shallow water of TV films, or has high-brow praise in Les Cahiers du Cinema gone to his head?”

Unwittingly, a new book titled Cinema Eye, Cinema Ear, a study of six contemporary directors, including a chapter on Hitchcock, added to the debate. The author was John Russell Taylor, who later wrote the official Hitchcock biography. John Coleman of the New Statesman began his review by

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