Marnie

#marniemovie

Spoiler alert!

Thief Marnie reacts to red flowers with intense emotion. (0:09)

Marnie reacts to a tapping sound during a dream. (0:17)

Marnie reacts to red ink spilled on her sleeve with intense emotion. (0:26)

Marnie's boss Mark tells her of his interest in the "instinctual behavior" of animals.
"It includes all the animal ancestors from whom man derived his instincts."
Marnie: "Ladys' instincts too?"
Mark: "Well that paper deals with the instincts of predators."
Marnie reacts to lightning and thunder with intense emotion. (0:30)

Marnie reacts to red on a jockey's jersey with intense emotion. (0:37)

Mark tells Marnie, "If I hadn't caught you, you would have gone on stealling..."
"again and again."
"What you do need, I suspect, is a psychiatrist."
Marnie: "You say no thanks to one of them and, bingo, you're a candidate for the funny farm." (1:11)

Mark finds Marnie face down in the ship's pool.
Marnie tells him, "The idea was to kill myself..." (1:18)

Mark awakens Marnie during another nightmare associated with a tapping sound. She cries out, "Don't hurt my mama."
Mark's sister-in-law Lil sees that he has been reading a book entitled, "Sexual Abberations of the Criminial Female."
Mark asks Marnie about pills he finds at her bedside, reels off a list of other ways she could kill herself, including "heights, ropes, ovens, even plastic bags." He asks about her dreams.
Marnie says, referring to her mother Bernice, "They'll hurt her."
She asks Mark, "You Freud. Me Jane?"
Mark: "If you won't see an analyst why don't you try to help yourself?"
"Start with The Undiscovered Self."
Marnie: "Shall I start with dreams, or should we free associate? Oh, doctor, I'll bet you're just dying to free associate. Alright now, you give me a word and I'll give you a free association." (1:30)

Marnie reacts emotionally when Mark says, "Red." (1:37)

Mark tells Marnie, "We can hire a lawyer and a psychiatrist." (1:43)

Marnie rides away when she sees a red coat on another rider. (1:45)

Marnie is ready to steal again but is intensely ambivalent, does not take the money." (1:53)

Mark tells Bernice Edgar, "She has no memory of what happened that night." (1:57)

In a little girl's voice Marnie tells Mark, "You let my mama go.
She recalls killing a sailor who hurt her mother, and the color of his blood. (1:59)

Bernice, "I thought when she lost her memory..." (2:04)

Does Marnie's stealing qualify as a repetition compulsion? Compare it to Hettinger's compulsive stealing in The Onion Field. Has Mark induced an abreaction? Will it cure Marnie?

ambivalence | Dissociative Amnesia | flashback | instinct | Posttraumatic Stress Disorder | recovered memory | repetition compulsion | Sigmund Freud | suicide

Tippi Hedren, Sean Connery, Diane Baker, Martin Gabel 1964

Read the novel by Winston Graham: