horrendously miscast

Film It has been remarked that the finale of this summer's sci-fi spectacular Torchwood: Children of Earth was replete with Hitchcock references, not least in scene where Gwen and Rhys were helping the children to escape their estate and take refuge in the barn, which if you added a mass of feathers and squawking you have a pretty good recreation of the scene in The Birds when the schoolkids are running for their lives. Of all the films in Hitchcock’s canon, this is the one which seems to have been borrowed from most extensively by other directors, from the heroes being trapped in a confined space and being menaced from the outside to the tonal impression of nature revenging itself against the human race for some unconscious crime – replace the gulls and ravens with zombies and you have a George Romero film. Contrary to her reputation, Tippi Hedron isn’t awful though she does bare a striking resemblance to Paris Hilton which if you’re in the wrong mood can make the scenes were city girl Melanie Daniels is being viciously pecked unintentionally funny.

No such fun with Marnie, which doesn’t work. In 1995, director David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada) made Miami Rhapsody, a film which seems designed to copy Woody Allen, from the titles to the shooting style to casting Mia Farrow in a lead role. It has none of Allen’s wit, gives Naomi Campbell an acting role and it’s a travesty that its deemed worthy of a dvd release when Ken Branagh’s rather more subtle homage, In The Bleak Midwinter remains deleted. Marnie gives the impression of being a similar attempt to create a Hitchcock film by a different director who doesn’t quite understand the director’s style (unlike, say, Paul Verhoven). The reasons are numerous; it’s too long, Hedron’s blank performance does nothing to engage our sympathy, Connery is horrendously miscast, it’s too long, the story about a confidence trickster who gets caught is predicated on too many coincidences which the director doesn’t justify well enough in thematic terms. And tossing out his rulebook on suspense, the director drops in a surprise at the conclusion which though surprising is also anticlimactic. Have I mentioned that it’s too long?