Marnie (1964)

Sunday, December 01, 2019 @ 3:00 PM
Calgary Central Library, Performance Hall - 800 3 Street SE, Calgary, AB
FREE Admission

Part of our Library Screening Series, which presents a screening of the film along with a short lecture/guided discussion of its cultural and artistic significance.

Marnie (1964) is not a traditional Alfred Hitchcock film. One of the last acknowledged masterpieces in his career, the movie is as much a psychological delve into the mind of the man responsible for such classics as Notorious (1946) and Psycho (1960) as it is a pure suspense film. Tippi Hedren is stunning as Marnie, a frigid woman with a mysterious past, a penchant for kleptomania and colour coordinated panic attacks. As her husband Mark (Sean Connery) gamely tries to manage and control Marnie’s aberrant and destructive drives, it slowly becomes clear that Mark may be harbouring as much pathological impulse as Marnie herself. Coming at a time when Freudian analysis was in vogue and Masters and Johnson were compiling information in their groundbreaking study of human sexuality, the film provides a provocative sign of the times. In the obsessive hands of its legendary director, Marnie is a snapshot into the mind of a morally transgressive genius.

-Written by Scott Lang

FOCUS: SEXUALITY

Jean-Luc Godard famously once said “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.” Film critic Pauline Kael seemingly echoed this statement when she titled one of her books Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Both filmmaker and critic observed the obvious relationship of sexuality and violence to cinema itself, and in both cases the amorous element comes first. Our Focus: Sexuality series explores how sexuality over the course of the last century has paralleled the development of cinematic language. Featuring films from the 1920s up to the 1990s, this globe-spanning series presents key films that consider subjects such as female sexual autonomy, gender fluidity and performativity, amorous power dynamics, and toxic predation. These are firebrand movies, emphasizing how the presentation of sexuality and human relationships on-screen is limited by the specific sociocultural framework of their era. In their emotional and cinematic power, these films are still strongly resonant and provocative today.

About Calgary Cinematheque

We are a non-profit film society dedicated to presenting significant, challenging, and essential works of cinema art in Calgary. During our season, which runs from October to April, we screen films weekly, in curated programs which situate each film in a thematic and historical context. We do this because we believe cinema is an essential form of artistic, social, and political expression. Audiences should be able to engage with a wide range of cinematic expression, not only with what is commercially viable. We believe in the power of sharing these experiences with other people in a theatrical setting and we strive to cultivate a community around that experience.  

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