Preposterous, overlong, sporadically entertaining, and turgid melodrama, that never goes completely camp but not for lack of trying. Some of the dialog and situations are inane with a wooden Sean Connery cast as Mark, a wealthy widower who lives with his father and his dead wife's sister, Lil(Diane Baker). Mark falls for Marnie, a frigid, compulsive thief and liar, who has a thing for horses, is terrified of thunder and lightning, and freaks out over the color red, not just the sight of it, but the word itself. Mark who reads up on the sexual appetites of the female criminal, marries Marnie in hopes of curing her, and treats her like a case study, specimen,and/or patient (though he's not a doctor). He also spends a lot of money paying off the men Marnie stole from in the past. At this point you may wonder what motivates Connery's character? He's remarkably patient, apparently likes a challenge and enjoys unraveling an enigma. Another mystery the film never explains is Lil. Why she lives with Mark and his new bride Marnie, what she does for a living, and what her intentions toward Mark and Marnie are? Lil is an obtrusive plot device, and the character becomes annoying. Hitchcock provides a couple of effective scenes, but overall seems to have lost his touch. The process effects are cheesy, the music over-orchestrated, and the film at 2hrs and 10 minutes seems to take forever to get to the final revelation which is complete with thunder and lightning, and over-the-top performing by Tippi Hedrin and Louise Latham, who plays her mother. The rest of the cast makes little or no impression, and even less sense of their characters. Following North by Northwest (59), Psycho (60), and The Birds (63), Marnie is watchable, if disappointing. 1964 produced 2 daring and interesting films dealing with abnormal female psychology, Sam Fuller's The Naked Kiss and Robert Rossen's Lilith.
