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Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery in Hitchcock's Marnie.
Hedren's character is more tightly wound than her hair bun. |
The recent documentary
Hitchcock/Truffaut prompted me to view the master filmmaker's works I had not previously seen. Top of the list was
Marnie, the 1964 psychological "sex mystery" starring Hitchcock ice blonde Tippi Hedren, who became a star in his
The Birds the year before. The doc also pushed me towards
The Girl, the 2012 HBO film detailing the Svengali-ish relationship between director and star which was broadcast about the same time as
Hitchcock, the film starring Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren, was released. The latter movie focused on Hitch's unique marriage to his collaborator Alma Reville and the production of his masterpiece
Psycho. I also want to revisit
Vertigo, the 1958 Hitchcock classic which topped previous champ
Citizen Kane as favorite all-time film in an annual poll of film critics. In the documentary detailing the famous interviews between Hitch and the French filmmaker/critic, several scholars said that
Vertigo was the essence of filmmaking and defined the movies for them. At the end of
The Girl, a title reads that Hitchcock died a few years later with only a few more films to his credit and that
Marnie was his masterpiece. In a behind-the-scenes featurette on the DVD of
Marnie I ordered from Netflix, another scholar says "If you don't love
Marnie, you don't really love movies."
