By 1962 the American film box office receipts had fallen a great deal since their peak in 1946. This was mainly caused by Americans buying more and more television sets and the fall out of World War II and the Cold War. Many directors, producers and screenwriters were becoming dependent on books, plays and even musicals to attract Americans back into the theatres. Alfred Hitchcock was one of those directors to use novels as an inspiration for the films. Hitchcock directed Psycho in 1960 which was adapted by the novel and made into a screenplay by Joseph Stefano. Following that Hitchcock directed The Birds which was based on the novelette by Daphne du Maurier. After a decline in film attendance in the 1960s and the Codes restrictions, Alfred Hitchcock still proceeded to make films that demonstrated psychological thrills and unanswered endings such as his film in 1963, The Birds.
In The Birds the main character Melanie Daniels, played by Tippi Hedren in her motion picture début, meets a handsome man named Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) in a pet shop in San Francisco while he is looking for a pair of lovebirds for his younger sister’s birthday. This scene helps foreshadow their soon to be relationship or romance and the attacks to come. Intrigued by Mitch, Melanie follows him to Bodega Bay for the weekend and surprises him with the pair of lovebirds she bought for his little sister. After leaving the birds at his house Melanie is attacked by a seagull making for the first attack of “the birds.” Over the next few days the attacks continue and get much worse. Along with the attacks, Melanie and Mitch’s relationship grows and as it grows Mitch’s mother becomes more distant and angrier. In The Birds, Mitch has this obvious struggle with his mother who does not want to be left alone and finds his relationships to be threatening. Lydia Brenner played by Jessica Tandy, tries to ruin all of his relationships or sexual encounters in order to keep him around. She did that with Annie Hayworth and once she realized she was no longer a threat to her, Lydia wanted to become friends and actually began liking her. Lydia’s attachment to Mitch could be because her husband died early on leaving her with Mitch and Cathy as her only support. After two major attacks on the school and the town the people begin to believe that Melanie was that cause of the attacks because when she got there they began. Mitch then demands that Melanie stay with him until the attacks sustain and they figure out what is going on. Melanie is suddenly attacked in Mitch’s home to the point where she is thrown into shock and saved within an inch of her life. The film ends suddenly with Mitch, Melanie, Lydia and Cathy driving off into a sea of birds in attempts to get out of the town unharmed.
During the 1950s and 60s, Alfred Hitchcock’s films fought the restrictions of the Code. Many of his underlying truths and themes in his films were merely missed and not seen as breaking the rules. In The Birds, Hitchcock leaves the ending in the open to follow the Codes principle of making sure evil does not prevail. With leaving the ending in suspense the audience can only assume what they want without having the film make them think a certain way. Hitchcock is known for leaving his psychological thrillers in suspense or leaving the audience in question. A question he leaves is, was Melanie really the cause of these bird attacks or was it some other unnamable force? Or was it caused by Mitch’s and Melanie’s relationship and as it increased so did the bird attacks? These go unanswered with the ending Hitchcock presented but gave the audience something to think about. Another one of Hitchcock’s characteristic themes is the proximity of “normal” and “abnormal.” In this film, everything seems to be normal- a girl and a guy falling for each other but then all of a sudden, these strange “abnormal” bird attacks start occurring and create a whole proximity between normal and abnormal.
Overall, Alfred Hitchcock broke the rules of Classical Hollywood Cinema and wanted people to truly experience films again. His film, The Birds continued to hold onto his pattern of showing the audience that innocent, supposedly harmless things can even turn deadly. Hitchcock was all about turning the normal into abnormal and giving the audience a thrill. The 1950s and 60s were some of Hollywood’s most critical years, and directors like Alfred Hitchcock broke through the barrier to make a statement with his films and express an idea that was yet to be explored.
“They’re coming! They’re coming!”
Tippi Hedren, as Melanie Daniels
The Fade Out: A Movie Blog 