Think Psychoanalysis, Think Freud
No, that's not Marnie...that's her creator!
"Hitchcock’s use of psychiatry in various films has similarly been criticized…Whatever falsification of
actual psychoanalytic methods one might object to in such films, the symbolic
point, the way in which Hitchcock has absorbed psychiatry into his aesthetic,
remains clear. He uses external intellectual systems with the pure opportunism
of the true artist" -Leo Braudy, The World in a Frame
In Marnie, after one of her nightmares, Marnie sees Mark standing over her. Mark does a free-association drill in which he says words like “red” and Marnie clams up. This triggers her entry into discovery while Mark plays “psychiatrist”. Mark tests her by saying ‘red’ and she repeatedly says ‘white’, struggling to refill the loss of childhood innocence. Hitchcock reminds us 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”.
When Mark brings Marnie to her mother for a confrontation about her past, her voice becomes child-like again as she regresses. Mark taps three times, as was in the actual incident for Marnie, to fully regain her memory and Hitchcock plunges into a flashback of the actual accident. 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.
At the end of the film, children are playing childhood games, a technique used to remind us of the innocence of youth…an innocence that is so fragile that when tampered with, as we saw in the case of Marnie, could lead to ongoing trauma throughout adulthood, reliving itself through the recurrence of nightmares. The children are heard singing, “Here comes the nurse, here comes the doctor, here comes the lady with the alligator purse,” showing us the connection between Mark and Marnie, which is one of analyst and one being analyzed (Marnie). The idea of Freud’s influence is finally validated at the end of Hitchcock’s film when we are directly placed in a relationship with one of patient and doctor. Psychoanalysis was used by Mark with free-association techniques and Marnie, who was brought back to the source of her trauma, has received the closure she’s been desperately searching for.
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