. Alfred Hitchcock is equally adept at the Gothic and Melodramatic genres and shows this in Rebecca (1940) and Marnie (1964) as respective representatives of these genres. There are a number of elements common to each of these films, though the emphasis given the different elements and some of the details differ and identify the films with different genres as a result.
In both films, the primary character is a woman who becomes involved in a romantic relationship. Each of these women is ultimately bound to the past, a past which interferes with the present and which makes a meaningful relationship nearly impossible until the holdovers from that past are resolved. The nature of the past that affects the present is different, however. in Rebecca, the past is represented in a dead woman who effectively--though not literally--"haunts" the house where the husband brings his new wife. Maxim de Winter was once married to Rebecca, and her presence is still felt throughout the house where they lived together, a presence reinforced by her clothes, her room, and her portrait. The new wife--a woman set apart from everyone else by the fact that neither the novel nor the film gives her a name, though the whole story is seen through her eyes--feels this presence most acutely. She also believes that Max loved Rebecca so much that he cannot escape from her memory, making the role of new wife especially difficult. This turns out not to be the case, but the new wife believes it and reacts accordingly.
The past in Marnie is a traumatic childhood incident, and for that matter, an entire traumatic childhood, all of which has been suppressed and sublimated by Marnie so that she steals for attention and does not know why she does. She also values her independence and fights to keep it. She is sexually frigid and beset by inner demons she does not understand. The heroine of the Gothic drama might be in the thrall of a strong male as marnie...