This is another poster I thought I had sold at auction and was glad to discover I hadn’t.  

Marnie isn’t the greatest Hitchcock by a long way. There’s been a great deal of debate about whether TIppi Hedren’s performance in the title role is deliberately mannered or just plain bad, and there have been whole essays written about why the back projection scenes are so obviously fake (its either a sly comment on her state of mind or Hitchcock simply got lazy – you decide).    

I do hold a soft spot for this film because when we studied Hitchcock on the Film Studies course at the University of East Anglia my friend Lisa and I were asked to dissect the opening sequence for the class. Hitchcock’s narrative economy whilst foreshadowing themes to be explored throughout the film is actually quite brilliant, as he managed in a great many of his films.   

As for the poster, I like the way Hitchcock himself is prominent over the nominal stars (including a mid-Bond Sean Connery giving a good performance in a fairly unsympathetic role). This is a 3 colour printing, so its likely for the first re-release, but it remains my favourite of the 3 Hitchcock quads I still own (the others being The Birds and Frenzy), although my Belgian North by Northwest poster still takes pride of place on my wall. 

I also recently picked up this impressive French ‘grande’ poster for the same movie. This I like too, but as I have no room to also display them both, this can be found for sale here.