ABSTRACT
In narrative films the meaning of color is primarily contextual, arising from the association of a color with a character, event, object, or situation that gives it meaning. To some extent, this mirrors the status of color as an epistemological phenomenon. It takes its identity, in part, from the object possessing that particular color. As an attribute of the object, it has no object status in itself (in this way, it resembles sound which is always the sound of something; a color is always the color of something). Thus the yellow purse in the first shot of Alfred Hitchcock’sMarnie(1964) represents the first in a series of yellow objects in the film, ranging from Mrs. Edgar’s refrigerator, Mr. Rutland’s yellow vest, Mark’s golden yellow bathrobe (which he puts around Marnie just before raping her), and Marnie’s yellow dress (which she wears when she rides Forio). As an attribute of the purse (and these other objects), yellow takes its meaning as a color from them and from its relation to other colors in the film. The chain of associations links yellow with money; Marnie’s yellow purse in the first shot is full of stolen money. The color yellow is associated with the use of money to buyaffection: as Bill Paul suggests, in the scene in Mrs. Edgar’s kitchen, when Marnie talks about how she gets “the money to set you up,” their exchange is shot in front of a pale yellow refrigerator which we assume Marnie has purchased for her mother (Paul 1970: 60). Yellow is used to signify the power that position and wealth gives to certain characters. Thus Mark’s father, an icon of patriarchal privilege, is introduced wearing a dark gold vest. At the same time, it also designates the ability of certain characters to “take possession” of others: Mark wears a yellow bathrobe when he rapes Marnie on their honeymoon and Marnie wears a pale yellow dress when she rides off on Forio (after Mark has retrieved the horse for her).
