The Birds (V.O. The Birds)
USA, 1963
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenwriter: Evan Hunter (based on the short story by Daphne Du Maurier)
Genre: Suspense, horror
Soundtrack composer: Bernard Herrmann
Editor: George Tomasini
Production company: Alfred Hitchcock
Main actors:
Tippi Hedren (Melanie Daniels)
Rod Taylor (Mitch Brenner)
Jessica Tandy (Lydia Brenner)
Suzanne Pleshette (Annie Hayworth)
Veronica Cartwright (Cathy Brenner)
Ethel Griffies (Mrs. Bundy)
Charles McGraw (Detective)
Plot
Melanie Daniels is the spoiled daughter of a San Francisco newspaper magnate. At a pet store she meets handsome lawyer Mitch Brenner. He knows who she is, but pretends to believe she is the clerk in the bird section of the store, and she plays along. Mitch is looking for some parrots for his little sister, who is celebrating her birthday soon. The masquerade eventually collapses and he leaves, after a bit of an argument. Although she seems to consider him impertinent, she has been impressed by the lawyer and wishes to see him again. She memorizes the license plate of his car and calls her father’s newspaper to trace Mitch’s address…
Soon after, Melanie gets the parrots the lawyer was looking for, and drives to the fishing village of Bodega Bay, after learning that this is where Mitch usually spends his weekends. Asking the local shopkeeper, he finds out the house where Mitch lives with his mother and sister. He wants to surprise her, leaving the cage with the birds at her house along with a congratulatory note for the girl. But since they don’t know what her name is, Melanie goes to ask the school. After finding out that her name is Kathy, she strikes up a conversation with teacher Annie Hayworth – who seems jealous of Mitch’s friend’s arrival.
Melanie rents a boat to get to the other side of the bay, where the Brenner house is. She leaves the parrots with the note and returns to the boat. She prepares to leave, but is pleased when Mitch spots her and follows her by car around the bay. Her real goal was to make contact with him. While still in the boat, Melanie is attacked by a seagull that pecks her on the head. This seems very strange to them, as these birds are not aggressive. However, as the wound is not serious, they do not give it much importance.
When Mitch and Melanie are at the local bar, Lydia Brenner, Melanie’s mother, arrives. The lady reacts with some hostility towards the young woman, but Mitch insists on inviting her home for dinner. Melanie continues with her charades, and tells Mitch that she came to Bodega Bay to visit her “friend Annie” (the teacher she has just met), and that she used the occasion to bring her sister’s parrots.
However, those stories don’t turn out to be very plausible and quickly fall apart. Kathy grows fond of Melanie (she invites her to her birthday party) while Mrs. Brenner remains cold and distant.
Mitch’s mother talks on the phone to a neighbor about the strange behavior lately of the chickens on their farm, who refuse to eat….
The rich heiress spends the night in a room rented by Annie. She confirms to him something we already sensed: In the past she had a relationship with Mitch. And his mother was a big obstacle, because she is a jealous and possessive woman, who fears being abandoned when her son finds a woman. Suddenly, a sharp knock on the door startles them both: when they open it, they find the body of a seagull that had crashed there. It is night, but the light of the full moon illuminates the area very well. Everything indicates that the bird swooped into the house intentionally, as if it had been trying to break through the door.
Over the next few days, flocks of birds begin to attack the humans, causing increasing havoc.
Melanie notices that the birds are proceeding in a very unusual way in Bodega Bay. The locals notice that too – and that the birds’ uprising coincides with her arrival….
Comment
What begins as a sort of “romantic comedy”, with the girl from a good family who invents convoluted and bizarre stories to be with the man she has fallen in love with, gradually turns into a suspense thriller with an increasingly tense and oppressive atmosphere.
The sensation of danger is gradually dosed; first it is only a few loose birds that attack the humans, then it will be immense flocks of all kinds of birds that will execute a relentless assault against the inhabitants of Bodega Bay. It seems indeed “the Apocalypse” of which the drunkard in the town bar speaks. Who would have thought that some harmless little birds would wage an all-out war against mankind? Why would they do it? – Everyone there is asking themselves that question, including Mrs. Bundy, the elderly ornithologist.
It is interesting to see “The Birds” after so many years, as it is now obvious to me how this film influenced Narciso Ibáñez Serrador for his masterpiece “Who can kill a child?” (1976). If “La residencia” (1969) has important parallels with “Psycho” (1960), Chicho’s second feature film undoubtedly owes a lot to “The Birds”. Both are films with a “daytime horror” atmosphere. It is more difficult to provoke anguish and suffocation when the action takes place during the day (as is the case in most of the footage of both films). On the other hand, in both “The Birds” and “Who Can…?” the threatening beings, the source of terror for the protagonists, are beings that in normal circumstances would be harmless. In today’s proposal, the flocks of seagulls, crows or sparrows that systematically attack people; in Chicho’s film they are “innocent and angelic” children rioting against adults. On both occasions, both the birds and the children seem to be possessed or tele-directed by some malign collective intelligence that manipulates them as instruments. To add more similarities, the action takes place in two coastal towns.
And likewise, in “The Birds” children play an important role, albeit as victims. It has always worked in horror films to include children or elements related to them (memorable is the scene of Melanie waiting at the school gates while a children’s ditty plays and the crows swarm in, preparing to attack).
There are also similarities, in structure and atmosphere, to zombie movies. The birds have the same role here as the undead. The humans must barricade themselves in their homes.
Some have interpreted “The Birds” as a clear example of Hitchcockian misanthropy. The British director would be “taking revenge on mankind”, using the birds to punish some “detestable” characters: the spoiled heiress, the overbearing lawyer, the unbearable mother, the jealous ex-lover, etc. The scene of Melanie protecting herself from the birds’ attack in a phone booth is supposed to be a metaphor: there the roles are reversed, now the birds are free and in control of the situation, while the impotent human is “caged”.
On this occasion Hitchcock preferred to dispense with a conventional soundtrack, there is no music to accompany the story but ambient sounds and prolonged silences that highlight the most tense scenes.
The film culminates in suspensory points, since the ending is of great uncertainty and its resolution is left to the viewer’s own imagination… (“Can I take the parrots, they haven’t done anything…?” “Okay, take them…”).
According to some, cinema in general and Hitchcock in particular always had a function beyond simple entertainment, applying subtle techniques of mind control (MKUltra) and mass manipulation, and sometimes hinting at their hidden intentions through cryptic messages. Without being particularly conspiranoid or adept at numerology, I will only point out that Kathy’s birthday party is her eleventh birthday (11, the cabalistic number par excellence) and that the actors who play the protagonist couple, Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren, were both 33 years old at the time of filming (number 33, the highest degree of Freemasonry, among many other “properties”). According to some analysts, Hitchcock left no detail to chance….
In the film, Tippi Hedren’s character is named after her daughter, Melanie (Griffith), who was a little girl at the time.
“The Birds” is based on a story by author Daphne du Maurier, who also wrote ‘Rebecca’, also adapted to the big screen by Hitchcock.
On this occasion, Hitchcock’s cameo occurs in one of the first scenes: As Melanie enters the pet store, he comes out with two puppies.
Get The Birds HERE!
(This is an affiliate link. I may earn a commission if you purchase through these link, at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.)