Hitchkock's worst film, by a wide margin.

Awkwardness. Intentionally included. Hm.

I have no reason to believe that Hitchcock was familiar with the works of especially the great European directors Bergman and Antonioni whose best work was coming out as Hitch prepared to do Marnie. It is a general observation that particularly the relationships in both men's films seem quite awkward. I coincidentally viewed L'Eclisse this past weekend, and a comparison between the relationships of Mark and Marnie to the couple played by Monica Vitti and Alain Delon is interesting.

In both films (we can also include some contemporary Bergman films, such as the minister and teacher's relationship in Winter Light, as well as other Antonioni films such as L'Aventurra and La Notte) the central relationships, while having some romantic elements, hardly proceed or are represented conventionally. Awkward interactions instead are the hallmark. Why?

I would imagine that many viewers of Marnie, when it first came out, asked themselves, perhaps subconsciously, why a film was being made about this particular couple. a nice looking couple, to be sure, but inside? Their characters? Having a husband who feels he must virtually force his wife to have sex, even if he thinks for "good" motives? What is going on here?

Hitchcock did not seem at least overtly to be considering the societal context. But in fact I think there is something of that in Marnie. There's something I think subversive about the Mark character. Here he seems on the surface the smooth, handsome, wealthy businessman, with even an attractive woman very much available to him of the same class and background. Instead he chooses Marnie to pursue, and not too subtly as a form of almost primitive activity, caging and subduing the human equivalent of a wild and even dangerous animal. Is this a case of a civilized man seeking to in a sense bring Marnie back into the world of well adjusted contemporary society?

Or is Mark the kind who needs to look elsewhere than his bourgeois surroundings and activities to find meaning? ANd if so, exactly what meaning does he think he will find?

What happens to this couple after the film ends? I suppose how one answers this can be a mirror to one's own view of the relation Mark has to his society. But we have to understand even if he in some way prevails in helping Marnie, presumably in keeping with her becoming a loving, and SUITABLE, wife for him, it is obvious that the whole endeavor is, in a word, awkward. And ftr despite whatever romantic notions i may have, I don't really think it is enough to say Mark does what he does because he loves Marnie. I don't think his love can be easily separated from his perceptions of her, which include from the beginning a sense that she is dangerous and not what she seems on the surface.

The awkward relation between Monica Vitti's character Vittoria and Alain Delon's in Piero, from L'Eclisse, in part derive the awkwardness from a difference in their respective relationship toward and view of money and the acquisitive culture. But for purposes of this discussion the reasons for their awkward efforts at forging a romantic relationship is not the point. It is instead how these directors, and one can include Truffaut, perhaps even Fellini and Godard, as viewing relationships at that time period as proceeding in abrupt fits and starts, men and women either not fitting together or doing so in unconventional, even psychologically dysfunctional, ways.

Piero also shares with Mark the context of being the successful man of money who has difficulty finding meaning and purpose in his sexual and romantic relationships. I think a difference is that Hitch is not overtly saying that it is precisely Mark's status that leads to his difficulties and unconventional behavior. In fact he includes the rather helpful notion that Mark has a great interest in Zoology. Heh. But it remains bizarre that he would take that interest as a starting point to pursue such a problematic love object as Marnie. Both men pursue a process which leads to conquest, which of course does not make them the least bit special as men involved in sexual relationships with women, to be sure. But the way they go about it, the awkard and unconventional approaches, are noticeable, and hardly what passed for your usual relationship in films of an earlier period.

Well, whether there was any intentional identification with the work of other filmmakers or not, we can certainly see in the work of more than a couple of influential directors in this period a focus on romantic relationships that are awkward and problematic in terms that are unconventional compared to prior periods.