“Opera Meets Film” is a feature dedicated to exploring the way that opera has been employed in cinema. We will select a section or a film in its entirety, highlighting the impact that utilizing the operatic form or sections from an opera can alter our perception of a film that we are viewing. This week’s installment features a look at two different versions of “Marnie.”

An interesting thing happened over the last few years with regards to Nicholas Wright and Nico Muhly’s “Marnie” – the creators seemed intent on distancing themselves from the Hitchcock movie. I saw this in an interview with 59 Productions Director Mark Grimmer a year ago and throughout much of the marketing, the creators repeatedly emphasized that they based the work on the original novel by Winston Graham.

You can’t begrudge anyone for that, mainly because it might establish unfair audience expectations and, of course, they are completely true in emphasizing their intent on interpreting the book, not the film.

But at the Met premiere on Friday, Oct. 19, Tippi Hedren, the star of the Hitchcock movie stepped onstage, almost nullifying any pretense of the separation from the film. In fact, the move was almost a major call out to embrace that these two works should be spoken of in the same breath.

Of course, this was not the intent with bringing Hedren to the premiere, but it’s impossible to ignore the change because Met Opera marketing for the work was not exactly embracing the movie the way it did Buñuel’s “The Exterminating Angel” last year.

In any case, the whole episode seemed strange because it was inevitable that comparisons to the film would be made and a look around at conversations taking place regarding the opera seems to always bring up the Hitchcock movie. The bottom line is that Hitchcock’s movie is far more recognized than Graham’s book in popular culture.

And we are going to propagate that conversation there.

In reality, there is no true sense in pointing to every plot change between the two versions because the two art forms are radically different in their approach and what they can and cannot do. This will also withhold judgment about the merits of either work individually, instead looking at their themes and intentions in how they are executed in the context of one another (for a look at how “Marnie” played as an opera on opening night at the Met Opera, you can look here).

Differing Approaches

For starters, the film is a Hitchcockian thriller in every possible way. The story itself doesn’t necessarily feel like it would be suited to that kind of genre, but the great British master honed in on the element that would fit his style and bent it to his needs. Hence, “Marnie” the movie revolves around unlocking the titular character’s past so she can have a “better” future. All the plot elements are designed around understanding this.

Marnie’s past is actually revealed quite early on in the opera, about midway through the first act. Marnie’s mother reveals that Marnie killed her baby brother and suddenly the entire story shifts and we get a better sense of Marnie as a person and her trauma. She carries around this burden of her past deeds and her actions in the present are a result of her testing her own limits of self-destruction. This allows the theme of her past catching up to her to play more openly for the audience.

The film builds up this theme slowly throughout, with Marnie literally seeing flashes of red in a scene with her mother that suggests something is up. We see it build up throughout the film, the character remaining a major mystery until it all climaxes in a deeper understanding of the trauma she carried. He wants us to be fascinated and beguiled by her in much the same way that Mark is throughout. In a sense, we are seeing Marnie through his eyes more than through her experience. It is only at the end that Hitchcock gives us the opportunity to reflect on all that has come before and get a better grasp of his titular character.

Meanwhile, the opera is asking us to explore the story with Marnie and this is borne out by her numerous “links” in which she narrates her story and the events taking place. She is no mystery to us and the way her backstory is revealed early only emphasizes that Muhly and Wright want us to be in Marnie’s mind the entire time.

For Hitchcock’s purposes, his strategy is perfect for maintaining suspense to retain our complete attention. Had he revealed the backstory earlier, the story would ultimately have little place to build, which is one of the opera’s great narrative challenges. This is no way suggests one approach is better than the other, but the effects are undeniably different.

In the film, Marnie is a mystery, an object to be unraveled; in the opera, she’s a person to be explored and understood. The former is undeniably a product of the “male gaze” that dominated cinema throughout the mid-20th century and as we will see later, this social context plays a big role in these differing interpretations.

The Crime

The crime itself is radically changed in the film (and both versions actually differ from the book). In the film, Marnie killed one of the men coming to visit her mother, who worked as a prostitute. Her mother never told her to protect her from the truth. We walk away with a sense of a dignified mother and understand her coolness toward her daughter at other points in the film.

But Marnie’s mother in the opera is a monster, blaming her own daughter for the death of her baby son when in reality she did it to avoid the social backlash of having an illegitimate child. We are led to believe that Marnie is the murderer throughout until a surprise ending changes our perspective. The result is that Marnie is exonerated of her guilt and allowed to roam free, even if she is headed to jail (she’s not going to jail in the film but instead plans to stick around with her husband).

It’s a rather divergent choice overall, but in the opera, it works in the context of its artform. Opera is filled with unnatural mothers who kill their children, or neglect them, or mistreat them. So, Marnie’s mother fits that motif, so to speak, and adds another to the collection of evil mothers in opera.

But that’s more of a miscellaneous fact because the mother figure within the context of “Marnie” is quite potent. Mark’s mother plays a major role in the opera’s other subplot about Mark’s crumbling business. Like Marnie’s mother, she is shown to be a potent figure with great power over her sons, but she is also a caring one that assumes responsibilities for their faults. Marnie’s mother is the polar opposite and this contrast hints at the possible reasons for their damaged children.

Mark & Marnie

Finally, the relationship between Mark and Marnie is quite interesting in both versions in both their similarities and differences and how their respective authors view them.

In the film, Mark and Marnie’s relationship is somewhat romanticized, no doubt with deference to the times and style of movie making. They give each other loving gazes, Mark protects her from a random stranger from her past, he invites her to nice events, and then also holds her tight when she is scared off by a lightning storm. We get a sense of their mutual attraction, which makes the sudden shift in their relationship jarring and tense. Is their relationship going to crumble under the realization of Marnie’s lies, and later, his rape of her? Or is that romantic longing we felt during the film’s first half to prevail?

It’s a sturdy narrative thread that Hitchcock sustains well, with an added conflict – Marnie just doesn’t want to have sex with Mark. In the context of the entire story, this thread proves important and essential, but it also brings into question Mark’s own intentions and his own feelings throughout. You walk away from the film with a strange feeling about their relationship when she finally says to him, “I don’t want to go to jail. I’d rather stay with you.” Like the best of Hitchcock’s films, this eerie ending defies the happy ending and leaves the viewer with added suspense.

The opera builds the relationship differently and concludes it in a completely different manner. Their relationship is cordial and somewhat intimate in their one scene alone together before he discovers her stealing from him (in the film she gets away with it and he discovers her later on). But there is no hint of an epic romance about to emerge. When he finally captures her in the act, there is no kindness whatsoever. They don’t have any real attraction to one another and this is emphasized by her phony declaration of love to him at one point. So when he attempts to rape her a few scenes later, it comes off as a man desperate to keep control over her. Mark behaves in the film with similar motivation and is desperate to have Marnie so close and yet so far, but their relationship has been built more extensively than in the opera, creating a very different effect.

It is after the attempted rape in the opera that the relationship shifts in a similar manner to the film – Mark tries to cover up for Marnie while still holding her his hostage in marriage. But where Mark in the film remains a strong figure, the opera weakens him at every measure until at the end he is hobbled from an accident and likely to lose Marnie forever. His behavior doesn’t afford him a happy ending in the way the film suggests with its version of the character.

But this plays into how Marnie winds up as well and how the authors see her and the world around her. Hitchcock’s film makes her more and more reliant on Mark as her savior while the opera’s decision to portray him as a pathetic and weak man gives her greater autonomy in the final moments of the work. When she says she is finally free in the opera’s final lines, she is not just free from her guilt and the torments of her past, but from Mark, who belongs to that past as well.

In the film, her utterance almost ties her more to Mark – she either stays with him or goes to jail. She doesn’t see any other option or even suggest it; he doesn’t either. Moreover, the climax of the film has seen Marnie relive her dark moment and has made her realize that her demons are far stronger than she ever imagined; she’s at her lowest position of power as a result because she IS guilty. So she NEEDS Mark and his power to avoid a horrid fate. In the opera she isn’t guilty, so she can start over without anyone holding her down.

Again, the film seems to emphasize the importance of male power over women, a constantly recurring theme in Hitchcock’s films. In a world of powerful men, women are objects to be admired and controlled. But the opera poses a radically different perspective – Marnie is capable of her own autonomy and has that right. She is beholden to no one despite everyone intent on destroying her.

Mark & Marnie’s Big Confrontation

This, of course, brings us to the big scene in which Mark attempts to rape Marnie and the outcomes and artistic expression of each.

The film almost glides through the event and even Hitchcock’s camerawork sends a message of indifference. Just as Mark throws Marnie onto the bed and prepares to rape her, the camera pans away and looks out the window. Obviously, in Hitchcock’s time, you didn’t show sex scenes on camera and that is likely the key motivator for that creative decision. But in today’s context, you see that moment, that camera move, and you realize that it is a symbol for how this kind of behavior was treated for so long; people just look away and pretend it never happened. When Marnie tries to drown herself in a pool afterward, Mark is shown as the hero who dives in and saves her, literally washing away any potential guilt associated with the previous act.

The opera’s perspective, inversely, emphasizes the violence of Mark’s attempted rape. We’re living in a #MeToo world and there is no way that Muhly was going to simply look the other way like Hitchcock does. Instead, Muhly’s music is full-on rage, Mark’s vocal lines nothing if not animalistic. Muhly wants us to feel Marnie’s fear at being confronted by an overpowering man. We’re not allowed to look away; the fact that this is some of Muhly’s most impactful music in the score only underlines how important this moment is for him. When Marnie does attempt to commit suicide moments later, the first act comes to an end. When Act two starts up, Marnie has already been saved, Mark stripped of the opportunity to play the hero because he isn’t one.

Ultimately, context again is everything. Hitchcock, of course, was no saint and his own behavior toward Tippi Hedren is now one of the famed instances of a powerful man ruining a woman’s life because she refused to submit herself to him sexually. So in some ways, he’s protecting himself. Muhly and Wright are not letting anyone off the hook.