31 Years, 31 Screams: #4 The Birds
Posted by J.D. Dunn on 10.28.2005
Suspense and shock beyond anything you have seen or imagined!
Note: I had intended to do "The Haunting" as the #4 film, but as I went to review it, I discovered that I apparently only have a "Haunting" DVD case with no DVD in it. So, I've substituted Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," which was originally included in the top ten anyway, but I took it out, hoping to review the several sets of Hitchcock movies at a later date.
I guess Hitch is trying to tell me something.
"The Birds" (1963) D:Alfred Hitchcock W:Evan Hunter, from the short story by Daphne DuMaurier Starring:Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Susan Pleshette, Jessica Tandy, and Veronica Cartwright. MPAA: [PG-13, for 1984 re-release] Runtime: 119m.
The Film:
Melanie Daniels (Hedren) is a spoiled socialite with nothing better to do than get press attention by playing practical jokes. Think of her as a pre-cursor to Paris Hilton.
One person who doesn't appreciate her antics is Mitch Brenner (Taylor). He runs into her in a bird shop and plays a little practical joke of his own. Intrigued by his insolence, Melanie decides to buy some birthday birds for his little sister Cathy (Cartwright) — love birds, in fact.
When she learns that he's left San Francisco for the tiny little hamlet of Bodega Bay, she decides to take the birds out to him in person. Folks are friendly in Bodega Bay. They give her directions to his house and tell her when he'll be there. Maybe they're too friendly. Daniels rents a room for the weekend from Annie Hayworth (Pleshette), who also had a thing with Mitch before his controlling mother stepped in.
Annie and Melanie immediately have a sort of love/hate relationship. Annie is jealous of Melanie, but she understands what Melanie is about to put herself through in order to be with Mitch, so she has a little bit of sympathy for her.
Melanie boats across the bay and drops off the birds, but Mitch spies her sneaking back across the bay. He drives across, planning to catch her as she arrives on the other side. That's when a strange thing happens. A gull swoops down and nicks her on the forehead. The townspeople hardly believe it; it's such an odd occurrence.
Mitch gets her cleaned up with some mercurochrome or 1960s' equivalent and invites her to dinner with Cathy and his mother Lydia (Tandy). As expected, Lydia is emotionally distant from Mitch's new love interest, but she has an excuse — her chickens have stopped feeding. She thinks it's the feed, but the man at the feed store insists it's the birds. After all, he sold a different kind of feed to Mr. Fawcett down the road, and he's having the same problem.
Melanie, meanwhile, figures the best way to Lydia's heart is through her daughter, so she ingratiates herself (read: bribes) Cathy into inviting her back for Cathy's big birthday party the next day.
That night, as Melanie and Annie are talking about what an emotionally distant old hag Mrs. Brenner is (although, in much nicer terms, of course), another gull SMACKS into Annie's front door and kills itself. Puzzled, Annie explains it away by saying it just couldn't see its way in the dark.
At the party, Melanie and Mitch get to know one another. He finds out that she's not such a spoiled gloryhound, and she finds that he's not such a stuck up mama's boy. It's all fun and games until a flock of seagulls attacks the children for no apparent reason during a game of Blindman's Bluff.
Soon after, the Brenner home is attacked by hundreds of birds of all species flying down their chimney. Mitch manages to seal off the chimney and sweep the birds out. He also invites Melanie to stay the night with them. In a separate room, of course. This is still 1963.
Lydia makes sure to leave bright and early to get away from the presumptuous Miss Daniels. She heads over to the Fawcett farm to ask Farmer Fawcett about his chickens and the feed he bought. What she finds there is shocking and horrifying. The Fawcett farm has been destroyed on the inside, and Dan Fawcett's body is laying on the bedroom floor, his eyes pecked out of their sockets!
Lydia speeds home, frazzled from the whole ordeal. Then, a funny thing happens. Unable to cope with the puzzling and tragic events around her, Lydia opens up to Melanie and confides in her about the intense loneliness she's felt since Mitch's father died. A son is a poor substitute for a lover, after all. Oops. Wrong Hitchcock movie.
Lydia asks Melanie to check on Cathy at the schoolhouse. Of course, Melanie does like a good little potential daughter-in-law. As the children sing a rendition of Ristle-tee, Rossle-tee, Melanie sits on one of the benches waiting for school to let out. As with North by Northwest and countless other films, Hitchcock mounts the tension by letting Melanie simply sit there doing absolutely nothing while bird after bird assembles on the small jungle gym behind her. Melanie looks up and sees a bird flying high in the sky. She follows it all the way to the jungle gym…which is now covered in birds!
Melanie, rigidly but calmly walks to the schoolhouse and tells Annie about the birds. Annie and Mel get the kids lined up, and they all sprint down into town. The clatter of little feet seems to stir up the birds, and they take flight attacking the frightened children as they run.
Melanie and Mitch hole up in a diner along with a gaggle of concerned patrons. They watch in horror as chaos rains down upon the town. A carriage overturns. A man blows up while lighting a cigarette near a leaking gas pump. One hysterical woman even blames the whole ordeal on Melanie. After all, none of this happened until she showed up.
After the terror subsides, Melanie and Mitch are able to make their way back to the Brenner home which they fortify in order to protect themselves from more avian attacks. Of course, it does no good. Melanie is attacked in the attack during one of the film's more memorable sequences.
Night turns to dawn. Mitch takes Melanie, who by now has gone simple from the bird attacks, his mother and Cathy out to the car. The birds sit, waiting. On the porch, on the lawn, on the horizon there is nothing but birds…
The 411:
Well, it's Hitchcock, so you know it's going to be good. One of the reasons that I was hesitant to include it in the first place was that it isn't really a horror film at heart. Sure it has several disturbing and beautifully shot scenes. At its core, though, it is a family drama.
That's why Hitchcock's film was such a creative and financial success while the inferior remake/sequel (an "Alan Smithee" film by way of Rick Rosenthal) failed miserably. In spite of technical advancements, the sequel was simply a movie about birds pecking people. Hitchcock's film is so much more.
To understand Hitchcock, one has to look at both his repressed Victorian upbringing and his love of Freudian symbolism. In the case of the Brenner family, we can see an emotional rift that no one in the family seems to want to deal with until the arrival of Melanie Daniels (and, with her, the birds).
Mitch's father has died, making him "the man of the house." Of course, that's a role he can't fulfill because he can never be a lover to his mother and a father to Cathy. So he becomes a pale imitation. Cathy, of course, is crying out for parental guidance. Her father is dead, and with that comes the emotional distance and loneliness of her mother. Cathy is practically parentless. When Melanie comes into the picture, it fills a gap with Mitch and Melanie as her new parental figures.
On the other hand, Lydia's emotions are repressed. She's withdrawn and sullen, especially with the arrival of Melanie. As Melanie begins to wedge herself into the family, first with a dinner invitation, then the party, and finally into sleeping at the house, Lydia feels herself being pushed aside. Hitchcock shows this with a single shot — a series of broken hanging teacups. Lydia's domestic life has been shattered.
With those two aspects in mind, you should note that each of the bird attacks takes place when one of the women (Melanie, Annie, Lydia and Cathy) expresses an emotional vulnerability, usually involving Mitch. At the end of the film, the family is so emotionally exhausted that they can no longer repress. Everything has been vetted. This new family unit, rubbed raw from emotional and physical strife, walks out into the world as a whole. In that way, it's much like the end of Nichols' "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
It's a masterpiece of pacing, suspense, and terror, but don't be afraid to enjoy it on a sub textual level as well.
