In Alfred Hitchcock's 1964 film Marnie, the titular character (Tippi Hedren) is seduced and married by Mark Rutland (Sean Connery), a publishing magnate. Over the course of the film, the relationship between the two characters changes and transforms as Mark attempts to "cure" Marnie of her various hangups and fears. However, in the process, Mark is instead shaping Marnie's personality to suit his needs, taking away her agency and instead making her "owe" him for all he is doing for her. With that in mind, the film is extremely misogynistic with Mark's strategies and interactions with Marnie, as he simply wants to reinvent her in order to control her. Instead of respecting her space and her choices, Mark just removes those independent actions and frames her future actions in relation to how they benefit him.
The instability that Marnie displays throughout the film makes Mark seem like a hero at first - Marnie is cold and unstable all at the same time, and Mark is taken aback by it. Furthermore, he catches her stealing from him, and instead decides to take pity on her. However, as the movie progresses, we see her being controlled in the same way that Mark uses to tame leopards. Marnie and the leopard are likened in this film, as two unstable beasts that can only be controlled through man's intelligence and cunning. If anything, Mark seems to take pleasure in taking on this newest challenge; he wants to see if a human woman can do his bidding just like a leopard can. His aggression and his ulterior motives suggest something much different from the gentle man who merely wants to help his lady love get better.
The film toes the line between who you should be sympathetic with - Marnie or Mark - at various points throughout the film's narrative. At first, the actions of Mark are clearly predatory; during their honeymoon cruise, when he finds out she is frigid and afraid of sexual contact, he eventually takes his pleasure from her without her permission. Given Mark's clear frustration at her frigidity, he instead rapes her in order to get her to enjoy sex with him, in clear violation of her thoughts and feelings. In his mind, she will enjoy it once she is exposed to those feelings, when in fact she has a very good reason for being so reticent for sexual contact.
At the climax of the film, when it is revealed that Marnie's issues and fears stem from a substantial childhood trauma, in which she kills a man who is attacking her mother. This singular event lends the audience to a new perspective on Marnie's situation; however, the reveal itself is problematic, and works toward the film's misogynist perspective. Instead of recognizing that Mark does not respect her autonomy and wishes, the film implies that her distrust of men comes from a childhood trauma that makes the fear irrational. Instead, Marnie's revelation just makes her decide to reconcile with Mark, ignoring the manipulation and "taming" that Mark has been performing on her. All throughout the film, Mark's efforts to "cure" Marnie serve nothing but his own needs, and he pays no mind to the actual process that should be taken to address such clear psychological trauma. With that in mind, Marnie's perspective is extremely misogynistic.
