Attractive accountant Marnie (Tippie Hedrin) moves from post to post, gaining enough of the confidence of her employers to rob them of the cash in the office safes. She assumes new identities with fake social security cards and hair dye. The heart of the film is an exploration into why she does this. "Marnie" is a bit of a masterpiece in style and the way it uncovers why she steals from her employers. Set in a set made out to be Baltimore, the film may look fake, which could be intentional just for the purposes of distinctive styling, because at this point in Alfred Hitchcock's career (1964) it would be safe to assume that what you see on the screen must have been what he intended, and, nevertheless, the photography by Robert Burks is some of the best, as is Bernard Hermann's score. This basically turns out to be the master's sleeper classic, mixing a story of sex and criminality, not too unlike what Hitchcock did with Psycho. Attractive women rob their employers in both films, and both masterfully explore the lingering and smouldering sexual hang-ups.
Review of Marnie
