The novel “Marion’s Wall” by Jack Finney was published for the first time in 1973.
Following his father’s advice, Nick goes to live with his wife Jan in an old house in San Francisco. While they are removing the old wallpaper, on a wall they find a phrase written by one Marion Marsh in 1926. Nick asks his father if he knows anything about it, considering that he used to live in the area, and discovers that the author of the phrase was an actress who died in a car accident at the beginning of a really promising career.
Some time later, Nick and Jan watch an old movie on TV, one of the few in which Marion Marsh had a part. Suddenly, Marion’s spirit appears to Nick and then takes possession of Jan’s body because she wants to go to Hollywood and at last become a movie star.
Technically, “Marion’s Wall” can be considered a horror story due to the presence of ghosts and the theme of the possession of the bodies of the living by them. Actually, Jack Finney used the elements of the various genres quite freely to build his stories in his own way. In fact, this novel has a style much lighter than a horror, just read the sections about Nick and Jan’s dog.
In several of his stories, Jack Finney showed interest and above all nostalgia for the past. In “Marion’s Wall”, the author focuses on silent movies, especially of the ’20s. At the time, they used films that easily deteriorated and were very flammable and for these reasons many movies got lost, including several that at the time were considered to be masterpieces.
“Marion’s Wall” starts with the discovery of a sentence written on a wall left decades earlier by Marion Marsh, a young actress with a future of stardom who died before she could fulfill her dream. Decades later, she’s looking for a second chance possessing the body of a young woman but things are not so simple.
“Marion’s Wall” is definitely not your classic horror novel on the theme of possession. Marion Marsh isn’t an evil entity but a talented actress who wants to get what she thinks she deserves. Instead of trying an exorcism, Nick and Jan reach an agreement with Marion and go to Hollywood. There, Marion finds some old friends still alive but otherwise everything seems to be very different from the ’20s.
In particular in its second part, “Marion’s Wall” is an act of love for silent movies. Nick is a fan and is torn between the will to get his wife back and the desire to learn more about past’s cinema from eyewitnesses. The possibility that many old films thought lost are instead part of the collection of an old friend of Marion’s make that weird situation much more acceptable to him.
Not surprisingly, “Marion’s Wall” is narrated in the first person by Nick, who comes into contact with the spirit of Marion Marsh, must deal with the possession of his wife and in particular is the character who conveys Jack Finney’s nostalgia for silent cinema. Inevitably, his character is the most developed together with Jan and especially Marion. The other characters are secondary and this is logical in a novel rather short even by the standards of the time which therefore has a linear plot.
In 1985, “Marion’s Wall” was adapted into the film “Maxie”. To confirm the fact that in this case labels have little value, on IMDB the movie is referred to as a comedy, on Wikipedia as fantasy and on Rotten Tomatoes as science fiction, fantasy and comedy.
In my opinion, “Marion’s Wall” is a good novel but inevitably it’s best enjoyed if you know silent movies, especially since the final part looks almost like a documentary about the lost masterpieces of that era. This is the only reason I’m not recommending it to everybody but only to people who are interested in cinema.
