Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 1945

The Contenders:

Leo McCarey: The Bells of St. Mary’s
Billy Wilder: The Lost Weekend (winner)
Clarence Brown: National Velvet
Jean Renoir: The Southerner
Alfred Hitchcock: Spellbound

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1945

The Contenders:
Anchors Aweigh
The Bells of St. Mary’s
The Lost Weekend (winner)
Mildred Pierce
Spellbound

Psychobabble

Film: Marnie; Spellbound
Format: VHS from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on big ol’ television.

I’m going to spoil Marnie. I’m going to be upfront about this on the off chance that you, Dear Reader, haven’t yet seen it and don’t want it spoiled. If that is the case, jump down to the second picture in this review, because I won’t be spoiling the second film. In the case of Marnie, though, I figure I’m doing everybody a service. This is a film that deserves to be spoiled. That’s not something I expected to say about a Hitchcock film, but this one deserves it for being the Freudian mess that it is.

Marnie (Tippi Hedren) is one messed up little chickadee. She works a con in which she gets hired as a bookkeeper or accountant at a firm, works there for awhile until the circumstances are right, and then steals as much as she can from the company safe. Then she changes her identity by putting her hair back to its natural blonde color, and moving to another city after visiting her rather cold and distant mother in Baltimore. She also has a significant problem with thunderstorms and can’t abide the color red. In fact, red drives her berserk.