My wife and I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” for the first time last night. It was an interesting story and we enjoyed the movie. However, the movie’s abrupt ending left me with some questions that weren’t answered during the film.
Why did the birds suddenly decide to attack and why at Bodega Bay? The writers touched on this in the movie briefly when they had one of the town’s residents accuse Melanie of being the cause (it all started when she arrived). However, the subject is never broached again. The viewer is left wondering why? Did it have to do with the lovebirds that she brought to Cathy? No answer is given.
While Mitch, his family and Melanie manage to escape, no mention is made of the “resolution” of this conflict. Does it spread? Do the birds unite worldwide in attacking humans? Will the army come in and wipe out the rogue birds? Is this an isolated incident? Again, the viewer is left to wonder about these questions.
I enjoyed the movie, but I feel I would have enjoyed it more had there been some answers provided. I spent a fair portion of the movie not necessarily concerned with the characters struggle for survival, but with trying to figure out the why and how the main characters were going to end the bird plague. I was let down on both counts.
Surely the writers and Hitchcock knew that viewers would have these questions. Why didn’t they address them in the movie, rather than leaving us hanging?
The films is, in my opinion, about nature running amok. The issue is not “what is causing this phenomenon”. Instead, it’s “how would ordinary people deal with a situation such as this.”
Compare this movie to, say a piece of schlock like “Day of the Animals” where they had the same basic premise but “explained” the movie by claiming it was all due to depleted ozone levels. Although there was an explanation for the events, it wasn’t a very good movie.
BTW, the movie was based on a short story of the same name by (I believe) Daphne DeMaurier. The original story not only lacked explanations, it also had a much darker ending.
It’s a classic Hitchcock MacGuffin – something used only to propel the plot forward.
The Daphne Du Maurier story on which the movie was based didn’t point to a definite cause, either. IIRC (It’s been decades sonce I read it) there were some vague references to enviromental distress freaking the birds out. Also, the attacks were more widespread than just one coastal town; I think there were reports of pigeons in London going beserk. By the end of the story, the crisis had peaked and was beginning to ebb, though not cease entirely.
Du Maurier was reputed not to like the film, or the fact that the setting was switched from Cornwall to California. In the book, the birds began to attack a farmer and his family, and eventually humans in general, following a harsh winter, but no further explanation is given.
In the film, several explanations are possible – revenge for the way people treat them generally; fortelling some general global apocalypse; punishment against behaviour of individual characters; or more likely just an out of control force of nature as godzillatemple says.
In any case, Hitchcock told the screenwriter he wanted him to retain only “the title and the notion of birds attacking human beings” from Du Maurier’s story. The ending was not quite the one he originally planned, which was going to be a final attack on the car from which Taylor and Hedren would escape. The actual ending in which the birds call off their attacks and the humans skulk off to brood on their predicament was reportedly the idea of the author V. S. Pritchett.
The dogs were Hitchcock’s own, by the way. You can buy a DVD with the original film ending as an extra too.
In the book, the farmer gives up all hope of the global bird plague ever going away. The final scene has him smoking his last cigarette like a condemned man and gazing into his fireplace in despair.
In the book, the story ends with the main characters looking out over the ocean and seeing what they at first think are navy ships coming in to rescue them. They then realize that the gray shapes on the horizon are massive flocks of sea birds heading toward shore.
I recall reading that the planned ending of the movie had the surviving characters driving down the highway to apparent safety in San Francisco only to see that the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge are covered with crows and seagulls.
Notice that the only two birds who don’t attack are the lovebirds that Melanie brings with her. The birds attack because we as humans do not love each other enough.
Or so my film professor explained it to me when we studied the movie in college. Take it for what it’s worth.
In addition to the DuMaurier story, the film was also inspired by some actual bird attacks in California.
The ‘Why’ Question I’d like answered about this movie is this:
Why in the world, as the birds begin filling the playground outside, would any sane schoolteacher suddenly suggest to her students that they leave the relative safety of the school and run down the street screaming like idiots?
There was one line in particular that led me to believe it was b/c they were tired of man’s treatment of them: In a scene in the diner when they are discussing why birds would attack, in the background you hear the waitress place an order for fried chicken.
The Criterion DVD has some still photos of original storyboards showing sketches of the birds attacking the car as they drive back to San Francisco, the birds perched atop the Golden Gate Bridge, as well as some copies of the original scripted scenes where they wonder if this will be a global thing or not. I guess Hitchcock chose to end it the way he did to make everyone wonder about it. Seems to have worked - here we are 40 years later…
Because it’s a psychological horror movie, not a plot-driven movie. I think that a big part of the reason the movie works so well, why it’s so unsettling, is exactly because they don’t go to any great lengths to explain why everything happens. It’s a little bit similar to The Exorcist, where the sense of dread comes from the characters’ not knowing why this is all happening to them.
The bird attacks are just a metaphor for Melanie’s “invasion” of the peaceful world of Mitch & his family & the schoolteacher whose name I forget – a world that seems peaceful on the surface but in fact has all these repressed feelings and anxieties bubbling underneath.
In my opinion, it would’ve cheapened the movie had they tried to explain any of it, or to resolve any of it. The “resolution” we get is basically one of “we don’t know how any of this is going to turn out, but we’re going to try to make it together.” So much of the unsettling atmosphere of the movie is built on its manipulation of the audience’s expectations – shots run on a bit too long, the lack of any background music is eerie, and you, like the residents of the town, can’t explain why any of this is happening.
On the DVD copy I have (don’t think it is the Criterion) it also has the storyboards and script treatment of the original ending. Basically after they drive off in Mitch’s car they drive through town and find scenes of devestation with the surviving people cowering in their homes. The birds then attack again and rip the convertable top off the car but they manage to outrun them. They hear on the radio somewhere along the line that birds have been running amok up and down the coast but the attacks seem to be centered on the town they were in.
There is also a short with Hitchcock on the DVD where he is talking about the film. It’s somewhat darkly humorous with him talking about how much humans love birds while showing us stuffed birds, a bird made into a hat and a bird dinner. He also has a bird in a cage and, when he reaches for it, it pecks at him.
“Now why would it do that?” he asks in mock surprise.
The implication (to me, anyway) was that the birds were attacking in revenge of their treatment but admittedly there is nothing explicit in the movie itself that says that.
As DesertDog says, it’s a classic Hitchcock macguffin.
Robin Wood has a wonderful analysis. He basically says that every conceivable explanation of the reason for the attacks is presented in the movie and rejected.
In the cafe, other explanations are presented and rejected. Mrs Bundy, the ornithologist, refuses to believe the attacks are happening. The town drunk proclaims, “It’s the end of the world” in a way that makes that attitude explicit and ridiculous. The mother accuses Melanie of being responsible, in a direct attack on the audience, staring straight at us with incredible intensity, and Melanie slaps her. Melanie is certainly not “evil”, the accusation is irrational.
Wood uses PSYCHO for comparison. The murder in the shower of Marion Crane makes no sense from Marion’s point of view (or the audience’s) – it is arbitrary and unpredictable. Hitchcock shows us the “precariousness, the utter unreasonableness, of life.”’
