Is Marnie Hitchcock's greatest failure?

I just watched Hitchcock's Marnie and it gets my vote. To begin with, Hitchcock's greatest theme, discerning fantasy from reality, has not been integrated well into the film. As a result, it feels like Hitchcock is constantly at odds with the script. The sleuth character searching for Truth is Connery, but the film's protagonist is Marnie. In Hitchcock's best films, the female love-interest acts as a catalyst in piquing the male protagonist's interest (Norman Bates being Psycho's protagonist), but Marnie is far more Tippi Hendren's film than Sean Connery's. She is the protagonist, not Connery. And that works out ok, because Hitchcock proves capable of allowing the audience to identify with Marnie, and especially in the scenes designed to make her fear palpable, he succeeds more than adequately. But Hitchcock's primary theme, the search for Truth/the wavering line between fantasy and reality, comes and goes. In Hitchcock's best films, the often times overt plot shifts are always underlined by this powerful theme.

For example, in North by Northwest, the plot often hinges on outrageous situations that provoke the audience to claim, "this can't really be happening!". But because the film is glued together by 'the fantasy' theme, or how true reality is never fully discerned from fantasy because we as humans can only glimpse reality through the refracted, fantastical glass that is our consciousness-endowed minds (watch the film's opening shot: the office building reflecting the street scene), every "this can't really be happening!" moment is thematically supported. Hitchcock seems to be saying, 'we say "this can't really be happening" in our dreams all the time, and we watch escapist movies to watch things that can't really happen because the need to dream and see impossible things is essential to being human, right? So what if I made a film built on "this can't really be happening" sensation? If the movie successfully evoked the "this can't really be happening" sensation, wouldn't its Truth and depth lie in the fact that it couldn't really be happening. Wouldn't such a film express the kind of depth and Truth that makes for timeless Art?'

But in Marnie, because Hitchcock's theme is at odds with movie's structure, these contrived moments, which everyone of Hitchock's masterpieces feature, erupts glaringly before the viewer. I will name two of these:

There's the first intimate meeting between Connery and Hendren in Connery's office. The scene's shifts all feel forced. One moment Marnie is cheerfully typing in front of Mark's desk, the next she is quaking in the corner in reaction to the thunder and lightning. The storm's sudden addition to the scene feels hopelessly contrived.

Then there's the movie's finale in which Marnie breaks down and realizes her past. One moment she's been turned inside out by the realization, the next, once Mark consoles her with a single statement by saying something like, "there now, it's all over", she suddenly a composed individual sitting patiently in front of her mother, waiting for the woman to explain herself. It's just too fast a shift from emotional breakdown to composed patience. It's either horrible editing or tone deaf filmmaking. Either way, the ball was in Hitchcock's court, and he failed to hit it.

I think these lapses are due to the fact that Hitchcock hasn't structured the film around the theme that speaks to him on the deepest level. He loses sight of his film's emotional context and cohesiveness when he is not telling it from the vantage point of "the truth seeker".

On the other hand, Hitchcock's use of long shots in the film is simply masterful. I love the first scene featuring the little girls jumping rope and singing nursery rhymes outside of Marnie's mother's apartment. Hauntingly beautiful. I also love the organically split-screen shot where the right side of the screen shows Marnie breaking into the office safe, and the left side features the oblivious janitor mopping. Powerful stuff that I won't be forgetting soon.

In making Marnie, Hitchcock still had flashes of brilliance, but he could no longer see the forest for the trees.

My rating: 8