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Marnie (1964)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Country: United States
Length: 130 minutes
Type: Psychological, Thriller, Drama
Putting the controversial rape scene in 'Marnie' aside for a moment, the film is a brilliant examination of two psychologically flawed characters confronting their demons and dark impulses together but the problem is you just can't put it aside. Rape within marriage was still legal in the USA until a decade or two after 'Marnie', so perhaps the inclusion of such a scene wasn't considered to be the movie-destroying thing it is for today's sane viewing public. Fortunately there is just enough ambiguity in the way it's edited (presumably for censorship reasons) to allow you to pretend it didn't happen and try to get on with the 2nd hour of the movie without viewing the male character as an irredeemable monster who we are still expected to be invested in. Without it the two characters Marnie and Mark (played by Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery) are quite sympathetic in their joint quest to fix their self-destructive compulsions by barrelling head long into them. Mark is as controlling, as Marnie is out-of-control. These opposing negative personality traits clash and ultimately lead to equilibrium. 'Marnie' is the apex of Alfred Hitchcock's deliberately artificial, fantasy style. Almost every exterior shot is a beautiful matte painting, plus many of the interiors too, some looked like just paintings (rather than matte FX shots) and shots use different re-painted mattes for different scenes. So to enjoy that aspect you really want to see this on blu-ray, or wait for a 4K release. It's interesting to see Connery in the middle of his early James Bond prime playing something else.
This trailer is amusingly dated and cheesy: