RED RED RED!
The color red – “the most prominent filmic dream color” usually symbolizes “excitement, activity, stimulation, desire, and violence associated with the heart, blood, and blood pressure.”In Marnie, “flashes of red in the dreams […] symbolize the blood of a repressed murder”
-Leslie Halpern, Dreams on Film
Alfred Hitchcock, most famous for his ScArY mystery films, uses the color RED RED RED to show us the main character, Marnie's, fluctuating psychological state.
Alfred Hitchcock brings us immediately into Marnie’s psychological struggle early on in the film when she sees a bouquet of red gladiolas when visiting her mother. The appearance of the red gladiolas fears and upsets Marnie to the point where she is unable to look at them. The reference to the color red will continue to be present throughout the film whenever Marnie sees it in any form, plunging her into a vague recollection of the trauma she experienced as a child.
We can see that the color red is an intentional technique used by Hitchcock to constantly reveal to us the fact that Marnie has repressed a significant childhood memory and will not be cured without some form of psychoanalysis. The color red seems to be an insight into Marnie’s own past – one that she does not remember.
Hitchcock seems to use the color white as a template for red to show the evil which has corrupted her innocent youth. As she stares blankly at a red spot she gets on her white blouse at work, Hitchcock makes her paralyzed and as viewers, we see what Marnie sees – redness. Hitchcock makes it very easy for us to share in Marnie’s trouble when he tints the screen red to show the powerful discomfort Marnie feels by remembering the source of her trauma and enhances the image of Marnie’s face, as a close-up, in the background. We see that Marnie is filled with pain and her eyes begin to turn red – another method Hitchcock uses to give us clues into Marnie’s internal trauma. Marnie is overwhelmed by these internal elements and by the new addition of external ones.
As Marnie screams, “The colors. Stop the colors,” lightning and thunder push a tree branch through the window ending Marnie’s psychological breakdown when she’s at work with Mark (Marnie). We see a direct allusion of colors being vital as a triggering of trauma which Freud explained as “objective sensory stimulus”. External objects could trigger memories in dreams: every time Marnie sees the color red, it subconsciously reminds her of the color of blood that was present in her actual trauma. After this, we are pulled in with a close-up of Mark, her new love, kissing Marnie and comforting her – something Marnie has been afraid to experience. We are currently seeing the beginning of a cure. Hitchcock, it seems, uses the close-up as a way to force the audience into reality. As we are mesmerized by the image of Marnie’s face, we enter into Marnie’s psychological state as she does.
Mark, who is aware of the recurrence of her nightmares overhears Marnie’s rant and catches her in a paralyzed state as she has her final nightmare. He begins to interrogate her with Freud’s “free association” drill. This is a direct influence of Freud upon Hitchcock with the practice of his analytical technique of psychoanalysis. Mark tests her by saying ‘red’ and she repeatedly says ‘white’, struggling to refill the loss of childhood innocence. Hitchcock reminds us once again, and for the last time, of the importance of colors as a way to remember. He then says, ‘death’ and she becomes frazzled to the point where she responds with “Help me” (Marnie).
In flashback form, we find out that Marnie murdered one of her mother’s suitors because she believed he was trying to hurt her. When we see the body, we see red blood all over the place. Hitchcock doesn’t let us forget the redness we’ve been alluding to throughout the movie. We learn that Marnie’s mother has taken the blame for the murder as a plea of self-defense and Marnie, in turn, repressed this memory to the point of forgetting it, having it return in her nightmares.
Read more:
An Introduction to Dreams on Film
Who are HITCH and BERG?
What is MARNIE about?
What is WILD STRAWBERRIES about?
So who is influencing HITCHBERG?
RED RED RED!
Is that you...Borg?
Think Psychoanalysis, Think Freud
Dream-work and Wild Strawberries
Concluding Thoughts, Works Cited, Suggested Reading, Image Credits, and About Me