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The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.
For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for Marnie can be found here.
Yes. Marnie is a 1961 novel written by English author Winston Graham. The screenplay was written by American screenwriter Jay Presson Allen.
"Wall eye" refers to an eye in which the iris lacks pigment so that the iris is of a very light gray, light blue, or whitish color, making it difficult to distinguish iris from cornea. A photo of a wall eyed horse can be seen here.
When Mark Rutland (Sean Connery) hired Marnie Edgar (Tippi Hedren), then posing as Mary Taylor, to work for Rutland & Co., he was suspicious but unsure. He thought that he recognized her from when she was working for his tax consultant, Sidney Strutt (Martin Gabel), from whom she stole almost $10,000. Strutt had actually pointed out Marnie, then posing as Marion Holland, one time when Rutland was visiting, only Marnie was a brunette at the time. Mark decided it would be "intriguing" to keep her around, so he hired her anyway.
For the same reason that he hired her, while suspecting that she was the woman who robbed Strutt...he wanted to keep her around. He tried to convince her (and himself) that he was doing it for her sake. To let her off scot-free, he reasoned, would make him criminally and morally responsible, so he decided to cover her theft and keep her around at Rutlands in order to help her.
The correct name is "flatid bugs," more commonly called "planthoppers." They belong to the Flatidae family, which has over 200 genera and 3,000 species. Some species occur in two different color forms, and when adults of these two forms cluster together on a twig they give the effect of a spike of colored flowers with green bracts. A photo of a flatid nymph can be seen here, and a photo of several adult flatid bugs beginning to cluster can be seen here.
In the novel, yes. In the movie, it is unclear. The scene does indicate that, although Mark is initially abashed at having stripped Marnie in a rage, he then, in the process of covering her with his robe, begins to make love to her. Marnie stares in dissociated apathy as she is lowered to the bed. In traditional Hollywood shorthand for sexuality, the camera then pans to the horizon, and time passes, as indicated by the breaking dawn. In the morning, two pillows clearly have been used in Marnie's bed, although Mark is shown awaking alone in his own bed. This may seem deliberately ambiguous, or it may be that these twin beds are simply too narrow to accommodate two people comfortably for an extended period. A further indication that a sexual act of an unpleasant nature has occurred - unpleasant at least for Marnie - is her suicide attempt immediately following this episode. As it stands in the film, there is nothing in the film to indicate that, if this was a non-consensual act, Mark was intentionally raping her. It may be that he saw her apathy as a sort of consent, or it may be that he could no longer abide by his word of honor not to force himself upon his wife.
Mark takes Marnie to see her mother (Louise Latham). A storm is raging outside, and Mark has to shelter Marnie to get from the car to the house. When they're finally inside the house, Marnie collapses on the staircase. Mark tries to force Bernice into telling what happened to Marnie when she was a child, but Bernice refuses to talk. Mark points out that he's hired a detective and read the court transcripts, so he knows that Bernice was once a prostitute. Bernice starts hitting Mark in order to make him leave. Suddenly, Marnie regresses to her childhood and begins to relate the story. One night, her mother had a sailor as a client. Mother rapped on Marnie's bedroom door and made her move out to the couch so that they could use the bedroom. A thunderstorm was raging, and Marnie got scared. The sailor came out of the room and tried to comfort Marnie, but she didn't like his breath when he was kissing her. Mom came out and tried to fight off the sailor with a fireplace poker, but he turned on her and started hitting her. In an attempt to protect her mother, Marnie picked up the poker and hit him in the head with it. The blood came streaming down his face, killing him. Bernice testified that she was the one who killed the sailor in self-defense and fought to keep custody of Marnie. Marnie realizes that her mother really did love her and lays her head in Bernice's lap, but Bernice tells her to get off because it's hurting her leg. Marnie expresses her fear that she'll have to go to jail now, and decides that she would rather stay with Mark. In the final scene, Mark and Marnie leave Bernice's house and drive away together.
Yes. Hitchcock did a cameo in each of his movies from Rebecca (1940) onwards. His cameo in Marnie appears about six minutes into the movie. As the bellhop and the woman with the black hair (who turns out to be Marnie) walk down the hotel corridor to her room, Hitchcock can be seen on the left, coming out of his own hotel room. A photo of the scene can be viewed here.
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