Out With Their Eyes: Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds

Only Alfred Hitchcock could take a premise which is so patently ridiculous - the birds come to life and try to kill everybody - and construct a beautifully realized thriller. Based on a disturbing short story by the macabre Daphne DuMaurier (who also penned Rebecca and Don't Look Now), Hitch builds some truly amazing sequences which are as audacious as they are experimental.

His follow-up to the black-and-white Psycho is in muted pastel colors, which is a clever ruse to brighten up what remains an apocalyptic story. Indeed, the stark images and lack of music only serve to create an atmosphere where there are no defenses for the viewer. The only "music" comes from the ceaseless sounds of the birds, which are as piercing and dreadful as those of the Body Snatchers.

Lovebirds in a Cage

Tippi Hendren stars as the impeccably coifed blonde socialite, Melanie Daniels. She's wonderfully terse as she arrives in the small coastal town of Bodega Bay to pay a practical joke on handsome lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), planning to leave him a caged set of lovebirds. It must be amour.

The evenly paced first half of the film follows Melanie's trip to this small town and her cute little trick on the unsuspecting Mitch. There is nothing scary going on, except for the fact that Hitchcock closes every scene with ominous shots of diverse birds perched on power lines or swooping around making a freaky caw sound.

The story is told with tremendous economy. We learn that Mitch spends his weekends with his adorable kid sister (Veronica Cartwright) and needy mother (Jessica Tandy). We're also introduced to Mitch's old flame, schoolteacher Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), who moved to this one horse town just so she could be close to him.

Hidden agendas boil under the surface as characters have tea or brandy, sitting in their parlors making painfully empty small talk. Melanie, intending to stay in town just for the day, winds up spending her weekend there as she grows closer to Mitch. Just so happens she's staying with Annie, who is friendly, reserved in a small town way, and filled with feelings which largely remain unsaid.

The pacing is deliberate, yet engrossing. Hitchcock plays with the idea as to whether or not something will break (as the tea cups do throughout the film once the birds launch into their attack), but before the melodrama completely allows itself to play out, we are suddenly hit with random bird attacks. They swoop down and peck people in the head, slowly massing for an all out assault that happens, of course, right in the middle of a crucial dinner scene where Mitch, Melanie and mother are caught in a tense moment.

What do the birds represent or symbolize? The academic could no doubt find a multitude of meanings, but for the purposes of this review let's assume they only represent pure animal evil. They attack and kill for no reason.

They pursue and peck at a group of schoolchildren in the first of Hitchcock's chase sequences, followed by a riot on Main Street where panic spreads throughout the townspeople. In contrast to the domestic, one-on-one slayings of Psycho, this time Hitch choreographs elaborate situations where an army of flying beaks hack through groups of thirty or more, with dashes of blood streaming down their face. This is the closest you will get to the Hitchcock War Movie.

The Lady in the Cage

The fear of a woman being locked in a cage runs strong throughout The Birds, most overtly in the cathartic terror of Melanie stuck in a glass telephone booth as the birds smash into the windows. How ironic, considering her gift of lovebirds to Mitch. Throughout the film, our heroine attempts to prove her mettle to Mitch, his mother, the people of the town. The fear comes from being imprisoned, which comes hand in hand with the amours of marriage and, dare I say, men?

When she hides in the boarded up house with Mitch and his family, there are scenes of grave stillness. The camera hardly moves as these four survivors cower as the flapping wings and fearful caw sounds are ever-present outside. It's a masterful sound design, inspiring all the more fear because the birds remain largely unseen until the memorably freakish climax.

What I remember most is the unmotivated shot of Melanie swooning on the couch, slowly cowering away from something - the camera itself. The birds aren't in the house, so what is she reacting to? The unknown force is more horrid and palpable and shocking than anything Hitchcock could cook up - like Repulsion, her terror in this sequence is internal.

The sexual terror fantasy certainly plays a part in some of Hitchcock's more memorable images, such as the brutal sequence where Melanie is stuck alone in a room being assaulted by a battalion of birds, unable to get the door open. Her arms and legs flail helplessly as trickles of blood slowly pour down. Mitch attempts to thrust the door open in the background, but we hardly see him. The camera cuts quickly between birds flying directly at her and jarring images of her entire body. It's as brilliant a portrayal of taboo breaking as the classic shower scene from Psycho. I won't dare reveal if our heroine makes it out of the room or not…

POSTSCRIPT: The birds themselves do not look particularly natural in the extensive chase sequences, nor do they seem to make that scary a foe at times - they don't seem to do anything other than nip and peck. Also, the special effects of having them fly in the air above, say, the schoolchildren, looks quite dated. Nevertheless, at almost forty years after the release, they remain scary. Why? Hitchcock shows a shot of a victim with bloody husks for eyes - this reminds us that he means business. These birds will kill you. By the climax, there are so many of them that the humans hardly seem to have a chance - and we never forget what he did to that one victim's eyes - that thought keeps us scared even when the birds seem to be just flapping around doing nothing. Sometimes economy is better.