Like most people my age, the first time I saw The Birds was when it had its broadcast
television premiere on NBC back in 1968. Then only 10-years-old, I had never
seen an Alfred Hitchcock movie before, but he was familiar to me, if not by
reputation, then most certainly by that corpulent profile featured so
prominently on his weekly anthology series, Alfred
Hitchcock Presents. I knew he was a film director but my strongest
impression was of his being “The fat Rod Serling,” or “The scary Walt Disney”;
a household-name TV host in the vein of Dick Powell and Loretta Young whom I
associated with suspense programs like The
Twilight Zone, One Step Beyond, and
Thriller.
Tippi Hedren as Melanie Daniels (always loved how "naturally" she holds that cotton swab to her head) |
Rod Taylor as Mitch Brenner |
Jessica Tandy as Lydia Brenner |
Suzanne Pleshette as Annie Hayworth |
Veronica Cartwright as Cathy Brenner |
Sir Alfred |
A class act in every way, The Birds was the first horror film I ever saw that didn't have the
feel of the bargain-basement about it. Beautifully photographed, breathtaking
special effects, suspense deftly metered; The Birds is simply a
marvelous example of a thriller that understands how much an audience enjoys
being taken on a thrill ride. Nowhere near as mean-spirited as some of Hitchcock’s
other films (his Frenzy is one of the ugliest, most misanthropic films I've ever seen), I liken the experience of watching The Birds to being a participant
in an adult version of the old “peek-a-boo” game one plays with an infant: I
may get scared when the film goes “Boo!”, but I delight in the jolt and I sit
there in gleeful anticipation of the next one, and the next one, and the next
one.
And should Hitchcock’s predilection for fake-looking sets
and feeble rear-screen projection mar this stylish enterprise with the cheesy-looking
scene or two (I still can’t get over that sequence on the hill overlooking the
children’s birthday party - it looks like a set from a high-school production
of Brigadoon); or Evan Hunter’s
script occasionally defy the normal patterns and rhythms of human speech; The Birds ultimately more than makes
up for it in the near-genius technical rendering of the bird attacks and the
kind of virtuoso storytelling that’s becoming all-too-rare in films today.
Throughout its evolution from late-career Hitchcock
embarrassment, to affectionately derisible camp classic, straight on through to
its current revisionist acceptance as a masterpiece of suspense and terror, The Birds has never once ceased being a
favorite of mine.
Torch-Carryin' Annie has to listen to the Effortlessly Elegant Melanie make inroads with The Man That Got Away |
The plot of The Birds is so well-known it doesn't even require summarizing. The fan and casual viewer is just invited to settle down and enjoy the ride, perhaps indulging in a little "Spot the Hitchcock trademark" as the film unspools. I think all of them are present: the icy blonde, the suggestive banter, the sinister brunette, the precocious child, the female in eyeglasses, the glib discussion of murder, the domineering mother, the victimized female.
If that's not to your liking, you can ponder non-pertinent, yet nagging elements like: that scary portrait of Mitch's father (he doesn't look like a man who "had the knack" of entering into a kid's world). Or maybe the huge discrepancy in age between Mitch and his sister, Cathy (the wonderful Veronica Cartwright, stealing scenes even then!). Or why those two little moppets being traumatized at the diner aren't in school. And while you're at it, ask yourself why Annie Hayworth's class is the only one held in that big old schoolhouse. Don't they have teenagers in Bodega Bay?
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
We’ve all seen it or heard stories: A
woman walks past a man -- man makes a comment (usually vulgar) about her attractiveness. Said woman ignores both comment and commenter only to find herself the object of
a stream of hurled invectives from the man, all blatantly contradicting his earlier
“compliments.” Standard operational procedure in misogyny: man places woman
on fetishized pedestal only so he can knock her off of it. In many ways, The Birds plays out like the world’s
most expensive and elaborate ugly-guy revenge fantasy against beautiful women (a mantle taken up several
decades later by Joe Eszterhas with the craptastic Showgirls). There are times when it feels as if Hitchcock devised the
entire multi-million production for the sole purpose of mussing Tippi Hedren’s
meticulously sculpted coiffure.
Haters Gonna Hate When it comes to disapproving glares from strangers, Melanie Daniels doesn't have any fucks to give |
Not since an
excitable James Stewart ran obsessively roughshod over Kim Novak’s shopping
spree in Vertigo can I recall a movie
preoccupying itself so all-consumingly with a woman’s appearance. The first
hour or so of The Birds is a virtual valentine
to all things Tippi. Hitchcock records her in loving closeup, ogling long shots,
and to the adoring exclusion of all else that’s going on around her. And when she’s not
being subjected to the camera obscura equivalent of a wolf-whistle, The Birds makes sure it captures every leering,
appraising gaze she draws from the males she crosses paths with.
But of course, the
glamorization/objectification of leading ladies is nothing new. What makes The Birds the perverse and ultimately camp-prone curiosity it is,
is the degree of enthusiasm with which the film approaches the task of dismantling all that it has so meticulously set up. Hedren’s Melanie Daniels is involved in each of the
film’s recorded bird attacks and seriously gets the worst of it in the
by-now-classic finale, but the movie doesn't ask that we relate to her
character so much as hope that each successive attack will knock a bit of the
starch out of her.
By the end, when the self-assured, independent, and superciliously smug Melanie Daniels from the early scenes has been reduced to a cowering, needy, child/woman, I have the nagging feeling that the film (Hitchcock) views this as some kind of triumph. As if Melanie needed something to jolt her out of her smug self-assurance, and her breakdown has ultimately reawakened her humanity and made her more worthy of compassion. While there’s no arguing that Melanie was a bit of a pill before, was it really necessary to strip her of all of her spirit to make her into a sympathetic character?
By the end, when the self-assured, independent, and superciliously smug Melanie Daniels from the early scenes has been reduced to a cowering, needy, child/woman, I have the nagging feeling that the film (Hitchcock) views this as some kind of triumph. As if Melanie needed something to jolt her out of her smug self-assurance, and her breakdown has ultimately reawakened her humanity and made her more worthy of compassion. While there’s no arguing that Melanie was a bit of a pill before, was it really necessary to strip her of all of her spirit to make her into a sympathetic character?
PERFORMANCES
It sounds very ungallant of me to say so, but a
great deal of the enjoyment I’ve derived from The Birds over the years has been at Ms.Hedren’s expense. To be fair, it must be said that it’s difficult to tell whether I'm responding to the limitations of the actress herself
or the made-to-look-ridiculous-on-purpose character of Melanie Daniels.
Venus in Furs Melanie Daniels' high-style glamour is made to look absurd when contrasted with the more practical environment of Bodega Bay |
THE STUFF OF FANTASY
After all these years, the scene of the bird attack at the Tides Cafe is as powerful as the first time I saw it. It is one brilliant, breathtaking piece of filmmaking! I tell you, no amount of expensive CGI wizardry is ever going to take the place of simple creativity and knowing how to use the visual medium of film to tell a story. I hate bandying the word "genius" about, but Hitchcock hit it out of the ballpark with this sequence. For me, it beats the shower scene in Psycho. (Although this scene never made me need to sleep with the lights on.)
THE STUFF OF DREAMS
If in this post I sound guilty of
succumbing to the kind of revisionism that spins vintage cinema straw into nostalgia-laced gold,
it's only because I've been around long enough to have taken note of what I perceive to be a certain downward trajectory in films. In the independent/foreign-film-influenced days of my youth, it was generally assumed that movies like The Birds were on their way out, and it was fashionable to mock their solid, old-school (read: Establishment) professionalism.
In this shot from the opening scene of The Birds, the traffic signal indicates WALK, but on the right of the screen, you can see a strong-armed "extra wrangler" preventing a clearly befuddled little old lady from crossing the street and spoiling Hitchcok's introduction shot of his leggy star, the lovely Ms. Hedren. I told you I've watched this movie a lot.
Jump ahead to the present day. We now have an industry run by lawyers and populated with techno-geeks churning out obscenely expensive comic book movies and CGI video games disguised as films for a subliterate demographic that bullies the boxoffice through their Twitter accounts.
All of a sudden, old-fashioned things like story, character, pacing, and maturity seem positively revolutionary. I've always liked The Birds, but I never considered it a classic. I think that opinion has changed. I don't think there's a director working today who can pull off what Hitchcock does in this flawed masterpiece, I really don't. It's a movie both smart and silly that never once falls prey to what is near-standard in horror films today: stupidity. It takes its time, it gets us to care about its characters, and the power of the shock effects comes from our engagement in the narrative. The Birds is not Alfred Hitchcock's best film by a long shot, but its obvious skill, artistry, and simple entertainment value make much of what passes for motion pictures today look like chicken feed.
BONUS MATERIAL
A couple of terrific essays on Hedren and "The Birds" can be found HERE at the site of fellow blogger, Poseidon's Underworld.