Marnie Screening Report

Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie uses color as a very communicative symbol throughout the film. It is an especially important aspect of the film because of the time period in which it was made, when technicolor technology was being more widely used in film and television. Although several colors could be tracked throughout the film, I found that the two most important and commonly used symbolic colors in the movie are yellow and red.

From the very beginning of the film, yellow is meant to symbolize wealth and prosperity as a color that can the precious metal: gold. The first frame of the film is a shot of a yellow leather clutch in the crook of a woman's elbow. It is revealed that this clutch holds the key to the safe at her place of work and the money Marnie had just stolen from her employer. We even the safe key has a yellow cover on top of it as Marnie drops it into a sewer grate to get rid of the evidence. When Marnie breaks into the safe at Rutland's, she steals the key to a desk drawer from a co-worker and takes the combination to the company safe printed on a yellow index card. Marnie uses the money she steals to support her mother and try to buy her love. It is clear that Hitchcock wants us to see yellow as a color that acts as a driving force that symbolizes what Marnie sees as her growing success and power gained through her stolen wealth that might finally buy her her mother's love and affection.

The most important color that could be tracked throughout the film is red. Not only does it symbolize danger, evil, and fear, but more specifically, red is symbolically linked to blood. We first see Marnie's clear dislike and discomfort towards the color red when she sees a vase full of red gladiolas in her mother's house. Suddenly, Marnie gets a panicked look on her face and a red color wash saturates a close up shot of her face. This is a strong signal to the audience to watch out for this particular color usage in the film because this is the first time that this color wash is used in a shot and its background and meaning is not explained right away. The next most important color wash of red used in the film is during the a violent storm that happens while Marnie is working overtime in Mr. Rutland's office. As soon as lightning and thunder begin to strike, Marnie starts to panic. A wash of red is used in a shot showing the thunderstorm through the office window and Marnie says "The colors. Stop the colors." Mr. Rutland responds with "What colors?", leading the audience to believe that Marnie has a deep rooted psychological fear of the color red since she is the only one who sees the color. The color red is finally reveled to be connected to blood when Mr. Rutland confronts Marnie's mother and questions her about an alleged murder that she committed. Marnie slowly remembers her mother's past as a prostitute as an argument escalates between Mr. Rutland and Marnie's mother. She then remembers the night that Marnie's mother was attacked by a man during a thunderstorm outside and remembers all of the red blood gushing from the man's head after she uses a fire poker to hit him on the head after he fell on her mother in the violent struggle and crippled her. All of her fears are then connected and we learn that Marnie's mother really does love Marnie despite her stunted emotional capacity because of how she protected Marnie from knowing or remembering how she murdered a man to save her mother's life that night.