"The Birds" (1963)

“I don’t want to be an alarmist…I think we’re in real trouble…I don’t know how this started or when, but I know it’s here, and we’d be crazy to ignore it.”

--Rod Taylor as Mitch Brenner, warning a skeptical community in “The Birds”

The above quote is timely, especially in the midst of our global health crisis.  Too bad we didn’t hear it from our leaders in December of 2019.

The quote comes at a turning point in the 1963 movie “The Birds”, Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological-suspense-horror masterpiece.  In the quiet California fishing town of Bodega Bay, while socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) begins a tentative romance with San Francisco attorney Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), the town is assaulted in random, deadly attacks by a plague of birds, with no apparent reason and no way to stop them.  Hitchcock described this terrifying film as his “vision of Judgment Day”.

In Hitchcock’s follow-up to his horror classic, “Psycho”, “The Birds” ups the ante on the psychology and the horror.  

The first half builds to a mysterious love triangle with Oedipal overtones.  Melanie tells of a troubled relationship with her own mother.  Lydia, Mitch’s aging mother (Jessica Tandy), is suspicious of Melanie, and is terrified of being abandoned by her son.  Annie Hayworth, a schoolteacher and Mitch’s former lover (Susanne Pleshette) might become an obstacle to Mitch and Melanie’s relationship. Only Cathy, Mitch’s 12-year-old sister (Veronica Cartwright) truly accepts Melanie, and the birthday gift Melanie gave her: a pair of lovebirds.

Large flocks of birds hover strangely over Bodega Bay.  No one pays much attention. A gull mysteriously attacks Melanie on a boat. It’s seen as a freak accident.  Another bird dives into Annie’s front door. There are reports that chickens refuse to eat, which raise some concern; but little attention is paid to the impending, unimaginable onslaught.

Suddenly, the film’s slow, intricate psychological drama is overtaken by a baffling fight for survival. The suddenness and severity of violent strikes by birds, with no explanation, is shocking.  After Cathy’s birthday party is targeted by flocks of gulls and crows, intent on harming everyone including the children, Mitch still must convince skeptical people, gathered at the local restaurant in town, that “we’re in real trouble”.

   

The remainder of “The Birds” is a mounting series of attacks, most memorably on the school playground, and even inside Mitch and Lydia’s home.  The threat is everywhere. No one seems immune.  The appearance of the lovebirds provides no comfort, even symbolically.  Even being indoors is dangerous, without the abundance of caution that boarded-up windows, barricaded doors, and blocked fireplaces might provide.

After a deadly explosion brought on by scores of birds outside of the restaurant, the community realizes that it is in grave danger. Even an elderly ornithologist, a scientific expert on bird species and behavior, is rattled.  Fingers are pointed.  Frightened townspeople looking for a scapegoat think that Melanie is to blame; the birds began their strange behavior after she arrived.

The crisis brings to the surface old resentments and new fears for the characters.  A few earlier, petty conflicts are forgotten, while others are resolved, some tragically.  Lydia explodes in fear and anger. Cathy is anguished as she flees her school under Annie’s protection. Melanie tries to overcome her carousing past, and fit in to the new household.  Mitch, out of frustration, tries to take matters into his own hands, thinking that a rock hurled at the birds will provide a solution.  Still, the birds gather by the thousands, making it impossible to move or touch anything without risk of being bitten, or provoking another attack.

Hitchcock’s hallmark methods of suspense are in full display: the long tracking shots, closeups of characters in wordless suspicion, the use of silences to build tension.  Almost in reaction against “Psycho” and its effective use of music to ratchet up the anxiety, Hitchcock uses no musical score in “The Birds”, opting instead for electronically manipulated bird sounds.   The silence where music might have been is more unnerving.  In the film’s most horrific scene, as Lydia runs toward us from where she has just witnessed the aftermath of an attack on her neighbor, the lack of sound, and Jessica Tandy’s silent scream, are worthy of an Edvard Munch painting.

Also, in an apparent attempt to outdo to the shock of Janet Leigh’s fate in “Psycho”, Hitchcock stages an attack on Melanie, trapped in a compromised attic bedroom, with scores of vicious beaks hurling towards her in a tightly edited sequence that is more than twice as long as the shower scene in the previous film. Mitch and Lydia bravely try to fend off the creatures to save her battered body, in images reminiscent of our first-responders at a disaster.

The sudden and mysterious rampages depicted in “The Birds”, their human effect and their aftermath, are an appropriate metaphor for our fear and panic as we fight against a mysterious global illness. We can immerse ourselves in this strange movie, channel our fears and draw our own parallels, while ultimately feeling some ray of hope amid the terror. When it’s over, and we are allowed to emerge from our homes, like our protagonists during the slow, breathtaking finale, let’s hope we can proceed with caution, and escape unharmed from the danger that might still be out there.