MARNIE: Was Sean Connery a Twist?
UniversalIN MEMORIAM
SEAN CONNERY (1930-2020)
Released in 1964, Marnie is frequently considered the last of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest films. It famously followed an unbroken string of five of his most resonant works, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho and The Birds and although Hitchcock would continue making films until 1976, Marnie was a clear indication that the master had passed his apex. Interestingly however, while his star was slowly fading, another one – Sean Connery’s – was rising and the trajectories of these two remarkable celestial bodies overlapped for a brief moment there. The manner in which they did so makes Marnie even more interesting to decode today.
It must be remembered that while he was still active, Hitchcock’s work divided critical opinion. His films were undoubtedly successful with audiences, yet they would often receive tough love from film critics labelling him a pedestrian hack. However, as he was busy developing North By Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds, his career was being critically re-appraised by Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, who championed him as an underappreciated auteur. This interaction between openly iconoclastic reformers of cinema praising Hitchcock’s output and the filmmaker’s perspective over his own work is a great example of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle borrowed from quantum physics and deployed philosophically in the context of film. The artistic re-contextualization of his work had a marked influence on the filmmaker’s awareness of his own style, which informed some of his later works. Even though he famously contended that “self-plagiarism is style”, he would come to deconstruct his own stylistic proclivities more decisively. And more playfully.
For example, while North By Northwest is seen as his definitive ‘wrong man’ thriller, it functions as an overt self-parody in many respects. Compared to The 39 Steps or The Wrong Man, it is most assuredly different in tone, which could be an effect of Hitchcock seeing his own work filtered through the lens of new-found auteurist re-appraisal and hamming things up a bit. In a way, the film could be considered a best-of compilation or a self-aware diorama littered with familiar traits and elevated by a distinctive sense of humour permeating it throughout, a proof that the master was more than capable of assuming a more holistic perspective over his legacy and that he had fun doing so.
The 1964 Marnie fits within those parameters as well, but given its sombre narrative undertone, it is appropriately much less comedic. Yet, it is still an exercise in cinematic self-awareness. Although it was based on pre-existing material and heavily infused with stylistic traits lifted from German expressionism, Marnie is first and foremost a bouquet of winks and nods at Hitchcock’s most recognized works. It is an exercise in self-reflection and an Easter egg hunt for his ardent fans who are surely able to draw parallels to Psycho or Vertigo. For instance, the fact Tippi Hedren’s character embezzles a large sum of money from her place of work immediately invites a comparison to the beginning of Psycho where Janet Leigh embarks on her doomed journey under similar circumstances. Similarly, the overtly toxic nature of the relationship between Hedren and Connery seems a perfect tonal match to that between Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak in Vertigo. Naturally, these parallels persist also on the plane of pure visuals and atmosphere. A shadowy image of Marnie’s mother standing in the door being reminiscent of Norman Bates in a wig is surely no coincidence. The same goes for the eerie tone of dread surrounding Marnie’s mysterious past and suppressed traumatic memories, which are clearly designed to evoke the spirit of Vertigo.
Undeniably, Marnie is engineered to strike a familiar note and indeed it does feel oddly recognizable even upon a single viewing. However, its true power lies not only in how Hitchcock layers these elements of self-reference, but also in the sophisticated subterfuge characterizing their deployment – an awareness of self-awareness – clearly designed to subvert what audiences have grown to expect from a Hitchcock picture. More specifically, this relates to the casting of Sean Connery in the pivotal role of Mark Rutland.
It goes without saying that by 1964 audiences had cultivated a set of assumptions heading to see a new Hitchcock feature, which spans the thematic sphere, the visual palette and casting choices. After all, the term ‘Hitchcock blonde’ must have come from somewhere, provocative as it is in its own right. However, just as he had a well-described fondness of attractive blonde actresses, Alfred Hitchcock would also end up casting a specific type of a leading man. This process must have involved studio producers for whom casting the most recognizable actors, like Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant or Henry Fonda was a purely business decision, but on an artistic level, these casting decisions made a lot of artistic sense as well. These men were cast with type, not against, as flawed heroes (Stewart), likeable rogues (Grant), or every-men (Fonda).
Naturally, it seemed organic and expected to cast a young Sean Connery in the role of an enigmatic millionaire. He was the talk of the town with three immensely successful Bond movies under his belt and – most importantly – his public perception was already heavily influenced by this role. It was nearly impossible to disentangle Connery’s visage from an implicit understanding that the character he would play would be a chauvinistic playboy whose favourite pastimes included smoking cigars and mistreating women. In fact, this is how Hitchcock likely wants him introduced in Marnie because he does not allow him to say anything himself when he first appears on the screen. While Hedren’s character is interviewed to work in his firm, he just stands in the corner smirking at the camera and projecting an aura of casual bravado. And it is left for the viewer to infer what kind of lewd thoughts are going through his head while he is ogling Tippi Hedren.
This is not a coincidence but a result of careful orchestration on behalf of the director who wants the audience to project what they already associate with Connery’s face onto the character he is playing in the film. The first impression Rutland makes on the viewer is therefore completely false, because it is not rooted in the narrative but in meta-information carried over from outside of the film. Hitchcock uses this imprinting to manipulate the viewer because everything Rutland says or does from that point onward will be invariably accompanied by a layer of subtext. The audience will be primed to think that everything he does is a result of careful design to trap Marnie in an asymmetric relationship and keep her enslaved in his orbit. This is also where comparisons to Vertigo start making even more sense and lure the viewer into thinking they are indeed watching a greatest hits compilation, a rehash of Hitchcock’s most powerful feature. They have no idea they are being fooled.
That’s because there’s more than one twist in Marnie. On top of the expected resolution to the central mystery surrounding Marnie’s past and her irrational fear of lightnings and red colour, Hitchcock stages a different kind of reveal, which is subtle enough to end up overlooked by viewers more thoroughly ensconced in the dark enigma more at home with prototypical film noir rather than what Alfred Hitchcock would be typically interested in. He uses the implicit perception of Sean Connery as a womanizing chauvinist as a character twist. As the film comes to its elevated climax and lays all of its cards on the table, Rutland’s intentions are also laid bare. It becomes apparent that his suspicious behaviour could have been explained by genuine interest in understanding the trauma Hedren’s character has experienced in the past, which continues to hinder her life at present. It is therefore the viewer’s fault to have assumed – prodded eagerly by Hitchcock by the way – Rutland was merely interested in a sexual conquest, while he was probably falling in love.
Thus, Sean Connery was used to play a subtle trick on the audiences who believed Marnie was merely an exercise in stylistic familiarity, while in fact it was a meta-commentary on the very expectation of familiarity. It is either a stunning example of Hitchcock’s unmatched genius in deconstructing his own myth, a serendipitous miracle, or a mixture of both. It continues nonetheless to be a fascinating film to look at exactly because of its layered nature. It is perfectly acceptable – and still fundamentally entertaining – to focus squarely on the film’s primary narrative and get taken over by its own ingrained twists and turns. It is equally possible to take a step back and see Marnie as the aforementioned gold mine of references connecting it to Hitchcock’s previous works. Though, it is arguably the most interesting to withdraw even further and understand that by hiding these winks and nods to Psycho and Vertigo within the film, Sir Alfred Hitchcock was staging and executing ‘a meta twist’. And it wouldn’t have been possible without hiring Sean Connery and his reputation as a living embodiment of Ian Fleming’s superspy - a case of type-casting against type, if that makes any sense.
