The Thinking Machine #86

In their series The Thinking Machine, critics Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin create a new video essay for Filmkrant every month.

Brian De Palma is generally a bit dismissive of Alfred Hitchcock’s work after Psycho (1960), claiming it to be too artificial and old-fashioned. There can be little doubt, however, that at least one element of Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964) impressed itself deeply on De Palma’s unconscious: the use of an actor to project psycho-physical states of both adulthood and childhood, veritably regressing to relive a primal scene of trauma. Let’s look at the interplay between Marnie and Obsession (1976).