Birds By Hitchcock
The plot of Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 "The
Birds," taken from a Daphne
Du Maurier (who wrote the novel "Rebecca") short
story, seems
ludicrous. Birds attacking a small town, actually killing
people. But in the
competent hands of the master of suspense, the movie is
frighteningly, well,
suspenseful. Evan Hunter (who also writes under the name
Ed McBain) wrote the
screenplay, and while not all of the characters are well
enough developed for
the viewer to understand their occasionally awkward
behavior, has nonetheless
crafted an interesting story that captures and
maintains interest. Birds are
flapping about in the opening shots, a
forewarning of their sinister activities
to come, before we're introduced to
Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), the daughter
of a newspaper owner. As she
walks into a pet shop director Hitchcock makes his
signature cameo appearance
(walking his two real-life dogs). She meets a
handsome defense attorney named
Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), and pretends to work
at the store when he asks
for help finding lovebirds for his little sister's
birthday. He embarrasses
her by saying that he remembers her from a court
appearance (one of her
practical jokes resulted in a broken window), and that he
just led her on to
give her a taste of her own medicine. Curious about Mitch and
not to be
outdone, Melanie buys two lovebirds and tracks him down. She makes a
trip to
Bodega Bay, where he lives on the weekends with his widowed mother,
Lydia
(Jessica Tandy) and sister, Cathy (Veronica Cartwright), sneaks into
the
empty house, and leaves the birds for Cathy. He spots her as she begins
leaving
in a boat, and drives off to meet her at the dock, when, as she comes
closer to
it, a gull sweeps down and pecks her head. Mitch takes her to the
local diner
and takes care of her cut. Melanie decides to stay in town for
the night, and
reappears at the home of schoolteacher Annie Hayworth (Suzanne
Pleshette), who
had given her directions to the Brenner house earlier. She
sleeps over at
Annie's house, and the two women talk. Annie's odd
behavior earlier in the day
(her presumptuous questions about Melanie's
relationship with Mitch, etc.) is
explained when she says that she used to be
involved with Mitch. Melanie is
about to get ready for bed when the women
hear a noise at the door. Annie opens
it to find that a bird had flown into
it, falling to the porch, dead. The birds
begin more direct attacks on the
town, first going after children at Cathy's
birthday party, and then
infiltrating the Brenner's house through the fireplace.
The next day,
Lydia leaves to drop Cathy off at school and goes over to a
farmer's house to
talk about why her chickens aren't eating, when she discovers
the man's dead
body, ravaged by the birds. In a surprisingly graphic shot (for
1963), we
see his blood-filled eye sockets. Lydia rushes home, shaken, and
when
Melanie brings her tea in bed later that morning, the two women have
a
conversation that sort of clears up the indifferent attitude Lydia had
been
displaying towards Melanie. Melanie tells Lydia, who isn't certain that
Cathy is
safe at school, that she will go to the school and bring her back.
Class is in
session, so Melanie goes outside to the playground and, as she
lights a
cigarette, birds begin gathering quietly behind her. When she
becomes aware of
them, she goes inside and notifies Miss Hayworth. They give
the children
instructions as to how to evacuate, hopefully without provoking
attack. In one
of the many cool scenes where birds are chasing people, the
school children are
shown being attacked as they are running home. I don't
want to give away too
much more of the story, but I will say that the
following things occur: more
talk about other weird bird encounters from
people who learn of the attack at
school, an explosion, another dead body is
found, there is another attack, a
power outage, and an attack on Melanie that
is at times visually reminiscent of
Janet Leigh's shower stabbing in
"Psycho." One of my favorite things
about "The Birds" is the ending. It
doesn't offer an explanation, and
it doesn't offer a way out. Instead, it
shows birds covering almost everything
in sight. Originally, Hitchcock wanted
the last shot to be of the Golden Gate
Bridge covered in birds, but it
didn't work out. Cleverly, this is the only of
his films that don't end with
the words, "The End." He wanted to
suggest endless terror, and indeed the
closing shots of the movie are potent.
Tippi Hedren, who starred as a
kleptomaniac in Hitchcock's "Marnie"
the year after "The Birds" was released,
is very good as Melanie. Rod
Taylor does well with his character, one of
the few leading men in a Hitchcock
film who isn't given the hero treatment,
and Suzanne Pleshette is noteworthy as
the fairly mysterious Annie. But I
found myself focusing more on Jessica Tandy
as Lydia. Her character was the
most complex, and she gives the best performance
in the film as the mother
who wants her son to be happy but is struggling with
the unresolved
abandonment issues deriving from her husband's death. Veronica
Cartwright
is a bit uneven as Cathy, but becomes more believable towards the
end. Many
people assumed that a movie about killer birds couldn't be as
satisfying a
thriller as such (then) recent Hitchcock fare as
"Vertigo," "North by
Northwest," and "Psycho." But
quite on the contrary, he makes the danger of
the situation palpable from the
start, and builds to an even more tense and
unresolved ending that is riveting.
The script, especially the setting,
is most commendable for never making
suspension of disbelief necessary, as it
would be if reasoning behind the bird's
behavior had been thrown in (such as
the end of "Psycho," where the
psychologist's monologue, which didn't
diminish the film, was still
unnecessary). One could argue that if you watch
a movie about homicidal birds,
you have to suspend your disbelief, but such
people have doubtlessly never seen
"The Birds," which has such convincing
performances and meticulous
direction lending to an atmosphere that never
makes it seem odd that such small,
harmless looking creatures could unleash
such terror.