“Marnie” is the film in which Hitchcock’s method reaches the breaking point—in which Hitchcock, the master of control, loses control.... “Marnie” isn’t a horror movie, but it’s a movie of horrors, and those horrors are all connected to sex. If there’s one constant in Hitchcock’s career, it’s sex—sexual desire, sexual aversion, sexual fear, sexual repression, sexual gratification—as the engine of human society at both its best (its occasional acts of heroism) and its worst (the crimes that he films with such cunning and such unnerving relish). Hedren’s performance is one of the greatest in the history of cinema, and it’s inseparable from the pathology of Hitchcock’s approach to her, personal and cinematic....“Marnie” remains the Hitchcock film that poses the gravest threat to the cinephile conscience; it’s the ultimate Hitchcock film, the one that threatens to knock Hitchcock out of his own system, and, so, the one that offers filmmakers and critics alike a way out of Hitchcockophilia.

Alfred Hitchcock's "Marnie" is at once a fascinating study of a sexual relationship and the master's most disappointing film in years.... Hitchcock has taken a pair of attractive and promising young players, Miss Hedren and Mr. Connery, and forced them into roles that cry for the talents of Grace Kelly and Cary Grant. Both work commendably and well -- but their inexperience shows....A strong suspicion arises that Mr. Hitchcock is taking himself too seriously -- perhaps the result of listening to too many esoteric admirers. Granted that it's still Hitchcock -- and that's a lot -- dispensing with the best in acting, writing and even technique is sheer indulgence. When a director decides he's so gifted that all he needs is himself, he'd better watch out.