Appendix 3.2: Seunple films - synopses and character lists
MARNIE US 64
dark, Mark is now the keeper of the knowledge, and eventually
it is he who will explain to the audience and to Marnie
herself what the relation between her traumatic experience and
its consequences actually is. His explanation exonerates
Marnie and the audience is clearly expected, like the
judiciary, to subscribe to both Mark’s analysis and his
exoneration of her.
The two parts of the film are distinguished by means of the
film’s address and the site of knowledge concerning the
principal enigmas. The visual form of the film however is
homogenous and consistent. In general colour, lighting and
camera angles operate in the service of verisimilitude, though
at various important moments in the narrative departure from
the established norms serve to alert the audience to the
particular narrative significance of an object or an event.
Camera angles off the rectangular axis refer us to the
precariousness of Marnie's mental state. The disposition of
light and dark across the frame tends to indicate to the
audience the relative clarity or obscurity of the characters
on screen, not in the obvious sense of whether we can see them
but rather, by extension, of whether they themselves can ’see’
(understand) within the diegesis. Colour is generally muted -
earth tones, neutral shades; thus the narrative significance
of the colour red is emphasised by its violent contrast to the
colour range to which our eyes have become accustomed.
Additionally soft focus and a flood of red light across the
screen each indicate stages in Marnie’s (loss of) control over
herself and/or events. The former, soft focus, indicates her
vulnerability, her own sense of unease, while the latter, a
flood of red light across the screen, signifies her regression
into clinical trauma. Finally, in terms of the visual form of
the film, I note the importance of symbols both to affirm the
concerns of the film and as hermeneutic devices to guide the
audience through the sequence of riddles posed in the
narrative. There is much play with locks, keys, safes and
drawers: clearly more than money is 'locked up’ here. The
condition of Marnie's hair - up or down, elaborately dressed
or hanging loose - is an important indicator, like the
lighting discussed above, of the degree to which we are to
understand that she feels in control of herself or events
around her. In more general terms weather conditions are used
to indicate symbolically aspects of the narrative as it
unfolds; for example the key moments in the audience's
understanding of Marnie are presaged, like the traumatic event
itself, by violent thunderstorms. Finally there are cutaway
shots where objects display, by analogy, the plot development.
An early example is the bowl of pecan nuts spilt on Bernice's
kitchen floor (spilling the beans); another the tangle of
branches, broken glass and shattered pre-Columbian artefacts
when the storm bursts into Mark's office (the storm breaks); a
later example is the juxtaposition in a close up high angle
shot, in the same frame, of Marnie's head and the spiral end
of the stair rail as she escapes, gun in hand, from Mark's
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