MovieChat Forums > Marnie (1964) Discussion > Worst backdrop ever?

Worst backdrop ever?

posted 8 years ago by Abner_Kadabner
8 replies | jump to latest

There is an unbelievable moment near the end of the movie when Mark and Marnie drive up to the building. At first there is the wide shot which was filmed on location, but when they move to the close up showing them getting out, you can tell they are suddenly on a sound stage, because the single worse example of a painted backdrop is in plain view. I mean, it is so bad, it looks like it was done by some high school kids for their school play. I have never been able to figure why Hitchcock used it as it is so dreadfully bad. Has anyone ever red any explanation for it?

I sometime wonder if Hitchcock himself realized that the movie was a disaster, and when he saw how bad it was, he just said the hell with it, it's no worse than the movie.

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Everyone may have an opinion but very few seem to have an informed one.

[–] CadenGodard 8 years ago

I admit I was at first taken aback by how ropey some of the stuff looked, especially you'd have to assume Hitchcock was working with a relatively decent budget. I looked into it and found this, from Robin Wood, who wrote a book on Hitch:

He [Hitchcock] worked in German studios at first, in the silent period. Very early on when he started making films, he saw Fritz Lang's German silent films; he was enormously influenced by that, and Marnie is basically an expressionist film in many ways. Things like scarlet suffusions over the screen, back-projection and backdrops, artificial-looking thunderstorms—these are expressionist devices and one has to accept them. If one doesn't accept them then one doesn't understand and can't possibly like Hitchcock.

[–] rsgre 8 years ago

Good comments, thanks. It turns out that Hitchcock did that occasionally, it was part of his style. His next film "Torn Curtain" was full of stagy sets too. Even in "North by Northwest" there were stagy sets like "the forest" which looks like the left over set from "7 Brides for 7 Brothers", and the shot of VanDame's house when the are leaving is an obvious flat painted back drop, plus earlier obvious miniatures for the house exterior and closeup crash sequence. He kind of overdid it in Marnie though, and it seems particularly annoying. Maybe it had something to do with the supposed falling out between him and Tippi Hedren and he didn't care anymore, and was his way of getting even with her.

RSGRE

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

Good comments, thanks. It turns out that Hitchcock did that occasionally, it was part of his style.

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Yes. I think -- rather like Disney with his animation -- Hitchcock liked the idea of creating a "surreal dream world" for his movies in which the "fakery" was part of the dream-like quality.

Sad to say, some better films than Marnie are so marred.

Your examples above RSGRE, are good ones.

This always pains me in North by Northwest:

Right AFTER a gorgeous three dimensional shot of Cary Grant being held at gunpoint by a maid-villain in the Rushmore house(with lamps and reflections criss-crossing the special "box")...we get a HORRIBLE matte painting, right behind Eva Marie Saint, of the outside of the house. In a close up on her face and shoulders, we can see a "little cartoon car" painted behind her that looks like it is out of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit."

The bell tower on the Mission San Juan Bautista in Vertigo famously doesn't exist, but Hitchcock gives us one "high shot overhead" as James Stewart staggers out of the church that screams out "fake"!

Perhaps because Vertigo and NXNW was so damn good otherwise, the matte paintings were simply forgiven. Not so, Marnie.

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His next film "Torn Curtain" was full of stagy sets too.

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That's right. Marnie gets the bad ink(that ship painting is bad) but there is more bad matte painting in Torn Curtain; its as if Hitchcock was edging into "animated features." And maybe he was. Gromek trails Paul Newman through one matte painting and glass shot after another in the museum.

And yet...isn't that how MOST movies are done today with CGI? Have actors walk in front of a green screen and PROJECT the streets and buildings around them.

In some ways, Hitchcock was way ahead of his time...

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Maybe it had something to do with the supposed falling out between him and Tippi Hedren and he didn't care anymore, and was his way of getting even with her.

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That's possible. A book written on the making of the movie raises the point that Hitchcock started work on Marnie too soon after the exhausting technical outdoor work of The Birds. He should have rested longer. He was so sick on the set he told an assistant that the man might have to finish the movie for him. The Tippi Hedren business happened during this stage.

He may well have given up on Marnie...

[–] dlynch843 8 years ago

Halfway thru the movie Hitchcock and Tippi were no longer talking--so it's a good guess Hitchcock did say 'the hell with it'. But I read somewhere that he grew up not far from the docks and always liked looking down streets that ended at the water and loved the sudden sight of huge ships docked there when he turned the corner. I've never read anyplace where he actually said 'that was a lousy painted backdrop of that ship.' A whole bunch of other people have said it, though.
Emotionally, I think 'Marnie' was very good Hitchcock.

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

I guess what I think is funny is that the ship backdrop is always called out as a horrible matte painting and yet...I think the painting of Vandamm's house in NXNW and the bell tower in Vertigo are just as bad. But in better movies than Marnie.

Note in passing: Hitchcock managed to GET that shot of a huge ship docked FOR REAL in...The Wrong Man(1956.) In New York City. A real ship.

[–] dlynch843 8 years ago

Yes--'The Wrong Man' was very real--parts of it were shot like a documentary--the whole process of being arrested and booked. Hitchcock went to all the places Manny went to--I lived in Queens for a few years and actually went to see Manny's house there. 'The Wrong Man' I think has been under-appreciated. A great movie.

[–] rsgre 8 years ago

Nice comments everyone, thanks. All these distractions take us away from the theme of the film, and in that sense are a failure on Hitchcock's part. I wish he had skipped these "arty personal touches", and stuck to stsndard film making style.

RSGRE

[–] dlynch843 8 years ago

I stand corrected: in Ackroyd's new biography, Hitchcock does say that it was a lousy backdrop. But I do think he was always interested in how rear-projection can be visually interesting--like the way the people crossed the street when Marion Crane stops for a red light in 'Psycho'.