:eek: I’ve seen shorter films than that! I thought it was some sort of promotional film (which I guess a trailer is, technically).
Were trailers typically that long at that time? Or, am I just too used to a “trailer” being just a collection of clips from the film?
I saw that trailer, too, on the beginning of the video for “Rope.” If I were a bird, I have to admit, I’d be doing much the same. Rallying the troops and so forth. It’s not so much why did the birds in the movie attack, as why haven’t they done so in real life already?
The crazy thing about the book/film is also that if they wanted to, they could do so, and easily. A bunch of birds, attacking from the sky, flying off when they get tired. We wouldn’t stand a chance.
Although I didn’t interpret it as the birds letting up. One of the seagulls gives Mitch a vicious peck as they’re walking out. I thought of that as saying, “We’re letting you leave, but don’t get fresh, damnit.” Or whatever a seagull might say. So they drive off, but who knows what happens to them afterwards. It’s just creepier that way, how it just ends. It was so unsettling. Much better than tacking on an unnecessary attack scene.
What I like about the movie is that it does not answer all the questions and leaves you wondering. This reminds me of why I generally hate sequels, because they usually try to explain stuff from the original movie. Thankfully there has never been a Birds 2.
I read approximately the same thing, in Peter Bogdanovich’s interview with Hitchcock in PB’s book Who the Devil Made It: Conversations With Legendary Film Directors (Ballantine Books, New York, 1997). PB asks Hitchcock,
Isn’t the film also a kind of vision of Judgment Day?
and Lord Alfred responds,
Yes, it is. And we don’t know how they are going to come out…I toyed with the idea of lap-dissolving on them in the car – looking – and there is the Golden Gate Bridge – covered with birds!
This is on page 535.
I don’t think I agree with that analysis, at least with how it was quoted above; I haven’t read the book. There’re two things going on here: explaining the bird attacks within the context of the story and plot, and then explaining the attacks as they relate to the themes of the movie. The bits quoted above imply a direct link from one to the other, which I don’t agree with.
He says that “the birds express the tensions of the people” can be argued against, and he’s right – in the context of the movie. That is, there’s no indication that the birds in the movie are being incited to attack from the emotions of the humans around them. Instead, the attacks are random, unprovoked, and purposeless. As those quotes demonstrate, the movie spends a good bit of time refuting possible explanations for the attacks but offers no real explanation.
But if you take a step out of the movie and look at it thematically, the attacks are representing the tensions between the characters. Every scene in the film is about Melanie’s “invasion” of Mitch’s life and the people close to him. When Mitch’s mother discovers the body of the farmer, it’s a horrifying invasion of her otherwise mundane world – much like the thought of a completely unexpected visitor arriving unprovoked and taking her son away from her, leaving her alone. When the birds attack the schoolchildren, it’s after Melanie has arrived at the school to pick up Mitch’s sister. During the attack, Annie (thanks, IMDB!), the ex-girlfriend, is killed, leaving Melanie to take her place.
But Psycho and The Birds are very different movies. Psycho isn’t about Marion Crane, it’s about Norman Bates. Actually, you could say it’s more about manipulation than anything else. The entire first part of the movie is just a set-up for the spectacular head-fake of the shower scene. That scene, and the other murder, are horrifying just because they’re so sudden and unexpected. And yes, the murder is sensless and random from the point of view of the characters and of the audience; that’s why it works. (You could say that there’s a subtle implication that Marion, while sympathetic, was just scandalous enough to “have it coming,” but that’s pretty weak.)
In The Birds, the attacks are completely random to the characters, but all tie together thematically. As far as the characters are concerned, none of them did anything wrong that would’ve provoked the birds. But as far as the theme is concerned, Melanie’s entering this small town, and in particular this small, close-knit family, is what brought all of these feelings to the surface: the feeling of dread, uncertainty, lack of purpose, jealousy, and fear of abandonment.
Unfortunately, there was.
(Speaking of senseless and unprovoked…)
And I see that the sequel was an Alan Smithee…at least he knew how to cover up his shame.
There was.
It was pretty horrible, or so I heard. I could never sit through it.
And they picked the most annoying kids song to repeat over and over in that scene. A bird attack would be heaven sent if it meant they didn’t have to sing it anymore.
Even bigger question: Why did the teacher completely abandon the kids and run into her own house? And if she thought it was so safe, why didn’t she take the kids with her? It was right next door.
And furthermore: Why does the main female character run into a phone booth, a room made almost entirely of glass when she knows they can break glass, to escape a bird attack?
And why did people laugh while the kids were being attacked by birds(in the theater I was in, anyway?)?
I once heard a theory that the lovebirds set it off. The birds in Bodega bay had never seen caged birds and it so revolted(shocked) them that they began attacking, perhaps to help their caged comrades.
Not a good theory, but I’m putting it out there if anyone is interested.
I believe they were. The trailer for Psycho was also pretty long. In that Hitchcock shows is around Mrs. Bates’ home and the Motel grounds. He’s in the bathroom when he talks about the horrible events that happened there and how he can’t talk about it. Then he pulls back the shower curtain and it goes to a quick shot of Marion Crane screaming and the movie title.
Not all of them were that long, but they were much much longer than the ones today. Movie trailers today can be obnoxious.
My theory was less that Melanie’s presence disturbs the complacency of the small town, and that she represented an upheaval in their lives. It seems to me more like she’s as much a “victim” as the rest of them, and not a cause at all. She is however the main subject of the “lesson” of the theme, which is, I believe, both a celebration and an admonition to beware of emotional freedom.
The birds represent the raw power of nature—the uncivilized id—which can, if embraced, provide us humans with our greatest joys as well as our most terrible fears. Notice that the birds’ frenzy roughly parallels the growth of Melanie’s and Mitch’s relationship; as they become closer, the birds become more horrifying. I think the birds represent the horror of opening oneself up to another, and more generally the sweetly terrifying process of attaining selfawareness.
In other words, I think it’s Hitchcock’s most personal—and most hysterical, and emotionally raw—film. In this way it parallels a modern day director whose art and arc owe a lot to Hitchcock: Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls was roundly trashed upon its initial release, but I think it will come in time to be appreciated as HIS most personal—and most hysterical, and emotionally raw—film.
My first sentence above is unclear. I should have written it:
"My theory is less that Melanie’s presence disturbs the complacency of the small town, or that she represented an upheaval in their lives. "
I think lissener is correct to perceive a psychosexual subtext to the film. Hitchcock was forever working out his personal kinks in his films, from Psycho to Vertigo to Frenzy. In a strange way, when it comes to Hitchcock, the less perverse the subtext, the less successful the movie (e.g. Topaz). With respect to The Birds, that doesn’t necessarily mean it should be considered the foreground element; it just provides a clue to the operation of the film’s suspense, and why we find it so disturbing without really being able to explain why.
I would also argue strongly in favor of the deliberate-unknown interpretation behind the attacking-bird MacGuffin. I take the position in this thread that a big part of what makes good fright movies so effective, for me at least, is the quality of incomprehensibility. Most often, this manifests as a decision not to show some or all of the monster, because if all it’s doing is killing people then there’s very little mystery to preserve. Other horror movies, though, present a monster with very different methods and objectives, and can get away with showing it to the audience.
I’d suggest that The Birds is effective in the latter fashion, but, for reasons I delve into in the other thread and will explore again here with a slightly different focus, it won’t be effective for everybody. Some people need explanations; they need to know what they’re supposed to be scared of, and are distracted by ambiguity (classic example: why couldn’t the kids find their way out of the woods in Blair Witch). Other people fill in the ambiguity with their own paranoia, and are distracted by explanations that don’t make any logical sense (e.g., the alien weakness revealed at the end of Signs).
The way The Birds is supposed to work, I believe, is that the lack of a rational foundation increases fear for some people. Let’s compare the two approaches.
Consider, for example, a hypothetical scenario in which the film makes clear that the birds went crazy because of sunspots, or nuclear waste, or some new high-frequency radar used by the military, or a brain parasite, or whatever. Doesn’t matter what the explanation is, exactly, just that there is one. Audience member A will be satisfied with the neat package of the film, will be freaked out by the violence, and will go home with a little thrill of fear, but won’t really think about the movie again. Audience member B, by contrast, will be unable to give over to the fear, being nagged by thoughts about the explanation: Is there a chance the brain parasite will cross over to other creatures? What’s the infection vector? Why does it have such a specific behavioral effect? And in any case, looking around the world outside the movie, it’s clear that sunspots don’t really do that to animals or there isn’t nuclear waste in the neighborhood or whatever and consequently there isn’t any reason to carry the fear and paranoia outside the film.
Now contrast the above with the movie as we have it. Audience member A sits through the movie, wondering, why is this happening? And when it’s over, A goes home frustrated because the movie seemed to be a tease, and he calls it stupid and incompetent and unsatisfying. Audience member B, on the other hand, has the same reaction, wondering why this might be happening, but instead of being frustrated with the lack of explanation, he walks out of the movie with a half-dozen possible theories and no guarantee that any one of them is correct. The idea here is that the next time he sees a row of starlings sitting on a telephone wire, he’ll get a frisson of uncertainty because his subconscious is still wondering what conditions could cause the birds to freak out and attack him.
The point is, in my opinion, movies designed to scare people fall into two basic types, and each one works for half of the audience but not at all for the other half. Neither side is right or wrong; it’s just a different preference. The Birds, I think, is designed to stick with people like a splinter of doubt. Some don’t like that, and reject the film. Some do, and enjoy it. All you need to know is which type of moviegoer you are, and pick your films accordingly.
There is a good article in an old issue of CINEFANTASTIQUE that makes a good case for Mitch’s mother being the cause of the troubles. In the same way that Morbius is the monster in Forbidden Planet. She doesn’t consciously know it’s her doing, but her rage at Melanie is the cause. Melanie is invading the life she and Mitch and the daughter enjoy, in fact the worst attack on Mel occurs when she enters the bedroom that she and Mitch would presumably inhabit if they married. When the daughter screams “Why is this happening?” Hitchcock cuts to the mother, who stands up! At the end, when Mom comforts Melanie and binds her wounds, symbolically accepting her into the fold, the bird attacks stop, and the united family drives off into the hopeful rays of the sun streaming through the breaking clouds. Also remember Hitch’s thing for mothers.