‘You Freud, Me Jane’?—Images of Womanhood and Love in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie (US 1964)

Alfred Hitchcock’s cinematic work is also still intensively evaluated and discussed today because it repeatedly opens up an unusually profound view of human reality. In ‘Marnie’, images of femininity and love emerge, capable of breaking through some illusions and prejudices about human psyche. Whether we experience a woman as strong or weak is not so much decided by individual characteristics. The unconsciously lived overall image is much more decisive. But does this have to coincide with the conventional images of femininity? It is similar with love. Is it a romantic feeling or rather the elaborate and often futile cultivation, raw patterns of appropriation and overpowering? The article shows which of the views Hitchcock opted for with ‘Marnie’.