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