Alfred Hitchcock

Marnie

To Catch a Thief

Good evening, my friends, foes, and indifferent acquaintances. This double feature post is brought to you by the horrendous cold that I have acquired, so I apologize in advance if my words lack their usual je ne sais what. Despite 90+ degree temperatures and still-in-tact leaves, Autumn has officially begun! And despite my stuffy nose and fatigue, I’m gonna kick off the Halloween movie season right now, dammit! I am dissatisfied by a mere month of seasonal cinema celebrations, so‍ ‍as‍ ‍always, I’m setting the creepy tone a week before October begins, this time with a round of films by the master of suspense, high-stakes, and telegenic blonde women: Alfred Hitchcock. Though I have watched three of his films on this blog thus far—Strangers on a Train, The Lodger, and Rope—it was about time that old Hitchcock got his own dedicated double feature. The majority of Hitchcock’s films were not only commercially successful and popular amongst the masses, their distinct and memorable imagery have made them stand the test of time, cemented firmly in culture as iconic. To refer to something as “Hitchcockian” is immediately more recognizable than the oft-misplaced descriptors of “Orwellian” or “Kafka-esque.” He is perhaps best known for Psycho, Rear Window (my fav), Vertigo (my least fav), The Birds, North by Northwest, Rebecca, Dial “M” for Murder, Shadow of a Doubt, Notorious, Spellbound, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 Steps—and I could go on. Alfred Hitchcock was born on August 13th, 1899, in the flat above his parents’ greengrocer shop in Leytonstone, England. In his 60-year career, Hitchcock made over 50 films, and almost 400 episodes of his television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and to this day his films are studied in schools and universities, relentlessly-analyzed by scholars and philistines alike, and heralded for their subtle but effective deployment of tension and fear. When you first watch a Hitchcock film, you may at first expect all of the rigidity and politeness of mid-century cinema—unwrinkled dresses, fine-suited gentleman, the uptight manners and standards of yesteryear. But what is always pleasantly surprising, and a bit jarring, to this critic, is how startlingly modern his films feel. His comfort and ease in tackling taboo subject matter, combined with his slick and satisfying aesthetics feels fearless and timeless. He certainly wasn’t the only director to move ideas and sensibilities into the future, but the fact that his tension-and-terror-filled movies were so popular, even in a more culturally-conservative time, says quite a bit about his power as a storyteller and his understanding of his audiences. Hitchcock was a talented, adept, uniquely-stylish filmmaker who brought horror into the mainstream. He was also a tyrannical, abusive, sex pest who inflicted another kind of horror upon his female leads. There had long been rumors about how difficult it was to work with this rotund renegade, but overtime, the details of his abuse, on and off set, have come to light. In 2016, actress Tippi Hedren came forward with her story, and recounted the numerous times Hitchcock tried to force himself on her. The now-infamous story of live birds being thrown at her for an entire days-worth of shooting for The Birds came as a result of Hedren rejecting another sexual advance of Hitchcock’s—but there was much, much more. To quote The Atlantic’s Matthew Specktor, “When it came to his leading actresses, he was known to have walked a line between stringent and outright sadistic… With Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Eva Marie Saint, Kim Novak, and (Janet) Leigh, the director would veer between the courtly and the coarse, at one moment inviting them to dine with his wife at his house in Bel Air, the next peppering them with filthy jokes in his trailer. And at least one allegation indicates that his behavior may have moved from the volatility long associated with Hollywood directors into something we today would call abuse.” What an unpleasant revelation, that the creator of such unique fictional monsters, was, in fact, himself a monster of the most basic and disappointing degree. This cruelty was not always public knowledge, but it’s hard not to recognize an undertone of sadism when you observe the way some of his leading ladies were treated, particularly in tonight’s first film.

I had many Hitchcock movies to choose from this evening, but I’d often heard interesting, polarizing things about the 1964 film Marnie—Hitchcock’s second, and final, project with Tippi Hedren. Marnie opens in a thrilling fashion, as many Hitchcock films do, with loud, intimidating music and a gorgeous woman leaving the scene of a crime. Sidney Strutt, the owner of a tax consulting company, is baffled to discover that nearly $10,000 of company money has gone missing, along with an employee named Marion Holland (a name cheekily close to the thief “Marion Crane” in Psycho...) Mr. Rutland (Sean Connery) is a wealthy and mysterious widower who was meeting with Mr. Strutt to discuss business when he learns of this theft, and the fact that “Marion” only worked there four months and was hired without references, which causes him to say, “Ah, that one. The one with the legs.” Mr. Strutt vows to catch this thief and put her away for 20 years, cursing to himself, “I knew she was too good to be true, always happy to work overtime, never made a mistake, always pulling her skirt over her knees as if they were a national treasure”, but Marion aka Marnie is already far, far away, visiting her horse and her invalid mother, whom she supports with this scheme. With a bit of hair dye and confidence, Marnie has seemingly pulled off this job many times before, and she has no plans of stopping. Her mother, while cold and lacking affection, is appreciative of Marnie’s money, and doesn’t seem to question the source of it too much, she is too busy instilling her daughter with the knowledge that all men are garbage (amen) and they can do just fine on their own. Confident as she may seem, Marnie is consistently plagued by a reoccurring nightmare, one she’s had since she was a child, and for some reason, she can be triggered into a feeling of pure panic whenever faced with too much of the color red. Neuroses and clear childhood trauma aside, Marnie heads off to another job, this time to a publishing house in Philadelphia, which she learns (too late) is owned by Mr. Rutland. Marnie tries her best to evade his gaze, but Mr. Rutland can clearly recognize her, though it isn’t yet clear just how well he knows her. Marnie keeps her head down and goes about this ruse for awhile, keenly observing where the money is kept, and when it is most vulnerable—all going according to plan. What she didn’t plan for, is Mr. Rutland’s presence, and just how smitten with her he would become. The two, unsurprisingly, spark a heated romance, but there is an undeniable discomfort in the fact that these two know each other better than either one will admit. I hesitate to spoil too much more of Marnie’s plot, because it is all in all, not what I expected it to be, and it is far more sinister than it lets on. Hitchcock, who often implements some form of Oedipal or Freudian fucked-up-ed-ness, reaches another level of depraved here, by turning its mysterious femme fatale into a victim, and turning its debonair male lead into a rapist. Though that may be somewhat of a spoiler, I feel it’s necessary to mention, given Tippi Hedren’s account of the abuse she endured working under Hitchcock. Though the rape scene is included in Winston Graham’s novel from which this was adapted, it became the topic of much debate during production. Producers and writers argued that audiences would stop sympathizing with Mr. Rutland the second he assaulted Marnie, but Hitchcock, now livid with Hedren, was enthusiastic about the scene. Allegedly, in response to the screenwriter’s objections, Hitchcock 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 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.” Norman Bates, knife in hand, could never say anything as chilling or disturbing as that. For many reasons, Marnie feels stubbornly old-fashioned and stylistically-out-of-place when compared to the rest of Hitchcock’s films, and as it reaches its climax, the soapy writing and performances feel overwrought and insincere. I was fascinated researching this film, and I do not have time to mention all of the brilliant modern-day analyses that have been written in response to Marnie, but I was a fan of what Matt Bucholz, author of the blog Hitchcock 52, had to say: “Somewhere there is an alternate-universe version of Marnie that’s a feminist classic. With just a few tweaks, it becomes a searing exposé of how men use women, and how a mother & daughter finally reconcile and find peace. A film where a man is murdered but no one goes to jail, and Marnie herself steals from countless lecherous businessmen with no jail time. It even passes the Bechdel test, multiple times! The sequences from Marnie’s point of view elegantly communicate how difficult it was to be a woman in 1964, and how all these impossible expectations (both societal and sexual) are forced on her from an early age. Marnie’s reconciliation with her mother is the film’s central core, and this resolution, while too neat to truly explain such psychological damage, is nonetheless extremely moving. It’s great stuff... But then there’s Mark Rutland, and that rape scene, filmed exactly as Hitchcock described. It’s shot like a horror movie, as though Rutland were possessed and later came to his senses. It would be fitting if this was the act of the villain in the movie, as it confirms all of Marnie’s fears. Yet this is the ostensible protagonist, the man who solves the psychological mystery, the man who tames and frees Marnie.” This is incredibly accurate, and I am still baffled by the fact that Sean Connery’s character is meant to be a “good guy” here, but that’s the upside down, unfair world of Alfred Hitchcock for you.

I intentionally did not watch these films chronologically, because I knew of Tippi Hedren’s story, and I knew that a dark cloud hung over the film Marnie. So I thought I’d follow it up with a much more lighthearted film, a film that might be entirely disappointing if you’re craving some of Hitchcock’s trademark suspense, this is his 1955 film To Catch a Thief. The film opens on a gorgeous oceanic view, where the only thing dreamier than the sparkling water and rolling hills are the credits that promise, “costumes by Edith Head”. Much like Marnie, To Catch a Thief then halts the harmony with the revelation that a robbery has occurred. “My jewels! My jewels! I’ve been robbed!” a woman’s voice screams, before we are shown a black cat, carefully traversing a roof. This happens a few more times, seemingly nearby, from penthouse suite to penthouse suite across the French Riviera, someone is robbing the extra wealthy of their ludicrously expensive jewels—at one point we even see their gloved hand reach underneath someone’s pillow as they slumber. The police immediately suspect that the thief is none other than John Robie (Cary Grant), once referred to as “The Cat”, though he claims to have been clean for 15 years. But that doesn’t stop him from making a cunning escape when the cops descend upon his gorgeous, gargantuan, greenery-filled villa. John sneaks away to his friend Bertani’s restaurant, which is employed entirely by men and women who fought alongside John in the French Resistance, who are not pleased to see him since they are all also under suspicion by the police now. John insists that he isn’t the one carrying out these robberies, and Bertani helps him get further away from the police, and commands a young girl named Danielle (Brigitte Auber) to take John on her boat. John realizes that the only way to convince the police of his innocence is by catching this copy-cat thief himself, so he teams up with an insurance agent named H.H. Hughson (John Williams), whose list of clients sheds a light on who might be targeted next. Cue the regal and refined but highly-opinionated Jessie Stevens (Jessie Royce Landis) and her daughter Frances (Grace Kelly), two nouveau riche American tourists who have thousands of dollars of jewelry hanging from their necks, earlobes, and wrists. With his dazzling eyes and burnt-to-a-crisp tan, John Robie pretends to be Conrad Burns, a businessman from Oregon, and charms the hell out of the Stevens’—particularly Frances, who is driven mad by John’s apparent disinterest in her. John stays close to the Stevens’ in an attempt to apprehend the new cat burglar, but he only ends up looking suspicious—and sexy—to the beautiful Frances. It doesn’t take long for her to discover who John really is, but this doesn’t deter her from falling for him, it only excites her more. I’ll admit, despite its lack of terror or tension, To Catch a Thief felt like a breath of fresh air after watching Marnie. There is sexual tension, though, between Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, of course, and the burning, sexy dialogue between the two were some of my favorite parts of this movie (even though I really don’t understand Hitchcock’s affinity for horny women and mostly-disinterested men [Rear Window, cough cough.]) Every single costume, from the most basic black-and-white Parisian stripes, to the most extravagant and elaborate gowns, were all just immaculate and stunning to witness. I knew Edith Head would knock it out of the park, because she always did, but wow, I was especially blown away by the costuming here. The same could be said for the cinematography, which, in moments big and small, stood out the most in To Catch a Thief. Whether we were sitting beachside in the bright, glimmering daylight or lounging in the glamorous hotel suite watching the exploding fireworks at night, every single detail within every single frame of this film just dazzled the hell out of me. I don’t care how you feel about “old movies”, you could pick a random still from any moment of this movie and I guarantee it would take your breath away and make you question if it was from a film or an oil painting. I had an absolute blast watching To Catch a Thief, and despite my worsening cold symptoms, I was ready to hop on a plane and dive right into that incredibly inviting French Riviera. There is much more to be said about the cars and the costumes and the double entendres of this thrilling and silly film—and I’m particularly curious why François Truffaut declared this to be Hitchcock’s “most cynical film”—but I already spent the majority of my word count talking shit about Hitchcock, which feels appropriate. Thank you for coming along on this journey with me, my dear reader, and thank you for putting up with my unwell words. Au revoir!