The Birds Is Us: Where Did We Come From?

The movie is, literally, a projection of our mental landscape. We passively sit back (like Jeffries in Rear Window) and the world appears as we live and make it. We are Melanie, following her harrowing story, disliking her, then softening toward her, then terribly worried for her. We are the rest of the film’s characters, in that we remain supremely perplexed over the attacking birds (somewhat compelled to come up with ridiculous theses). Finally, most uniformly and unconsciously, we are the birds, unleashing our reservoir of vengeance, jealousy, and sanctimony.

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In his books Movie Man and The Moment of Psycho, David Thomson suggests that Hitchcock uses Psycho (1960) to assault the audience, with Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) acting as our surrogate. Moreover, the attack on Crane represents an emotional surge from the director himself. In other words, the “psycho” is Hitchcock, suggested by the director when he shifts his “director” credit back and forth in the same way that the title had been.

The Birds (1963) emerges three years later as if the stuffed birds in Norman Bates’s parlor have come to life. Visually, we see the stuffed birds looming over Marion while she eats a sandwich (“like a bird”) that Norman (Anthony Perkins) had made. The shot foreshadows Norman’s attack on her, and a later shot in the office, when Arbogast points out Marion’s name in the register, Norman leans over and appears birdlike.

To solidify the connection, a poster for The Birds reads: NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER WITNESSED BEFORE HAS PREPARED YOU FOR SUCH SHEER, STABBING SHOCK! (My emphasis) Except that we have been prepared.

Thomson also reminds us of the pleasure Hitchcock derived from manipulating the audience (see Hitchcock-Truffaut also). Lost among the manipulations (e. g., creating a fear of taking a shower) is our desire to watch Marion in her white and then her black bra and, finally, naked in the shower. The latter we share with Norman, who ostensibly feels shame for putting her in the room next to his office so that he can watch her in the bathroom. We suffer the consequence of our desire, unknowingly, when Marion is stabbed to death. We have been taken into the shower and the narrative asks us to share Marion’s experience, her finally understanding that she must return the money she stole. Too late. Marion dies and we lose our connection to the film’s main character. For the moment we turn to Norman, who is cleaning up the “mess” made by his Mother.

Hitchcock has manipulated us by taking us from the victim to the murderer. Sure, we don’t know Norman murdered her – yet. But we’re in the realm of Greek tragedy: matricide. There are no excuses. We are responsible for Marion’s death. We did not want her to die, consciously. But we have lost our grip as we watch her voyeur-like, starting with the film’s opening shot in the Phoenix (a bird name) hotel bedroom.

This is the preliminary orientation, our unconscious mental orientation, for taking us into the mystery of the bird attacks in The Birds. The birds are a force of nature that have come after the human race. For untold wrongs? We will never know. Just as we never know the real machinations of Norman Bates’s mind. Unless this force in Psycho, followed by another, larger force in The Birds, represents something that cannot be explained explicitly. However, we are given leeway to draw conclusions from the setup in The Birds and derive an explanation that may not be as definitive (and misleading) as the psychiatrist’s (Simon Oakland) in Psycho; nevertheless, it may open our understanding of the purpose and meaning within the apparent nihilism of The Birds.

Marion has been replaced by Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren). We follow her to the end, up to the violent attack in the upstairs room that has the same force on her person as does the knife blade on Marion in the shower scene. Note: Where Janet Leigh did not have to be present to film the scene, thanks to a body double, Tippi Hedren spent days fighting off large birds, suffering facial injuries around the eyes. In a way, it makes sense that the experience should be more difficult for Melanie-Tippi. The forces building up to this attack have accumulated for an hour and a half of film time, compared to the 40 minutes Marion-Janet is on camera. Further note: Hitchcock ultimately approached Hedren to be his mistress during the making of Marnie (1964). The attacks on Melanie nearly anticipate Hitch’s reaction when she rebuffed his advances.1

The opening of Psycho communicates an emotional shrillness through the sounds of the stringed instruments in the credits, a sound that will become the knife thrusts in the shower scene. Added to this are a credits sequences that shows the cracking, the splitting of the names, with special emphasis on the title AND the director’s name. Hitchcock has said that one-third of the impact in Psycho comes from Bernard Herrmann’s music. These opening sights and sounds infuse a psychotic force into our minds. Hitchcock also used a special camera lens to replicate human eyesight, especially in the scene when Norman looks at Marion stepping into the shower, further implicating us in the impending crime. Thus, while we are carried along with Marion’s story, we identify with her trepidation when she is confronted by the policeman (Mort Mills) on the highway and later buys a car from California Charlie (John Anderson). Simultaneously, we become psychological accomplices to her death, perhaps only because we are watching the movie.

The Birds’ credit sequence works on us similarly. Instead of slashing instrumental music, we get the sound of birds, different types of birds, but a sound produced by the Trautonium by Oskar Sala. Apparently, Hitchcock couldn’t find bird sounds that were spooky enough. An effect of this strategy is to establish distance between the birds in the film and the birds in the world. We are drawn away from the world into the film, one of Hitchcock’s most subtle manipulations.

He’s already started on this course with a radio announcement a year before the film premiered.

If you have ever eaten a turkey drumstick, caged a canary or gone duck hunting, The Birds will give you something to think about.

He’s implicating us by citing reasons for Nature turning on Humans.2 We are the perpetrators. The animals are striking back. Perhaps justly so. This theme comes up, comically, at the restaurant when the owner calls out for an order of fried chicken. The opening credits and subsequent actions alter this strategy (manipulation), but does not absolve us for the deaths of billions of birds for food or pleasure, by necessity or accident.3

The “reason” for the bird attacks may be unexplained, but the appearance of Melanie Daniels is associated with bird agitation and fury. We might interpret this as a form of “disapproval for her actions,” based on her life prior to the film starting, or even the way she enters Mitch Brenner’s life. Related to the latter, the bird agitation could be read as an indication of her mixed desires, especially those she cannot admit to herself.

She appears at the start of the film and is in most scenes, thus we are linked to her narrative more strongly than we had been to Marion Crane’s. At the start, Melanie walks along the sidewalk and notices a flurry of birds in the distance by the bay. Then she walks into a pet shop to see whether the mynah bird she ordered had arrived. While waiting, she runs into Mitch (Rod Taylor), who “mistakes” her for an employee. She plays along as she looks for the lovebirds he wants to buy for his sister. She’s showing him several birds but doesn’t know one from the other, then allows a finch to escape from a cage. Mitch catches it by putting his hat over it when the bird comes to rest.

This apparently innocent scene is laced with minor, not unpleasant deceptions by both parties. She thinks she’s putting one over on him, until we learn after the bird is captured that Mitch actually knows who she is. Melanie has a public reputation for outrageous incidents (which may be exaggerations of the press), and Mitch has seen her picture in the paper. He thought it would be “just” to put one over on her. Indeed, he condescendingly refers to her being in a gilded cage. Thus, the scene in the shop ends with both characters “acting” upset with the other, although we can tell (as seasoned moviegoers) that we have witnessed some convoluted flirting.

I dwell on the episode because it is innocuous. Their respective feelings are rising in what may end in a relationship. Yet this potential relationship carries with it emotional feelings that border on being hurtful. We also get our initial glimpse of Melanie’s turbulent emotional life that she will detail to Mitch later, during Cathy’s birthday party (and before a bird attack).

The episode in the shop leads her to buying the lovebirds to give to Mitch – a birthday gift for his sister. The birds in the cage represent a vicarious love offering and, literally, calm birds! (These birds never become hostile during the attack inside the Brenner house and are taken from the house by Cathy when they flee the house at the end.) After Melanie delivers the birds surreptitiously to the Brenners, she flees across the bay in a motor boat, watching for Mitch’s reaction, thus continuing the byplay started in the shop. As she approaches the Bodega Bay docks, a seagull swoops down on her and gashes her forehead. The first attack by the birds. Is the attack cause and effect? Even with such an innocuous, almost romantic gesture? What disapproval, if any, is being shown? Who or what has unleashed it? Well, Hitchcock made the movie, and bears some responsibility. And what about our responsibility, so willing to make ourselves available to watch and experience some cinematically induced feeling like, for starters, getting scared (and worked up for more and more violent attacks)?

The subsequent, increasingly menacing bird behavior all happens with Melanie in the vicinity. True, she was not at Dan Fawcett’s farm when they plucked out his eyes; however, on the day she arrived, we learn from a phone call to Mrs. Brenner (Jessica Tandy) that Dan’s chickens were fussing and not eating their feed. It is confirmed that the feed is not the problem. But Melanie was in town, in the room, when she heard about the chickens. We also hear from the fishing boat captain, Sholes (Charles McGraw), that seagulls attacked his boat. Thus, the cause and effect of these attacks relates to Melanie’s presence and not her actions, which you could say about her relationship with Mitch. Cause and effect does not mean “she did a bad thing” and must have a punishment exacted (the formula for the Halloween, Friday the Thirteenth, and Nightmare on Elm Street series). In fact, she might be suffering punishment that she doesn’t deserve – and the maker of The Birds may feel this way. Could we face the unpleasant fact that we regularly and undeservedly punish and hurt those we cannot conceivably think we could hurt?4

Subsequent bird attacks complicate the case against Melanie as the sole source of Bodega Bay’s problem. Soon, she is no longer the sole victim. Though she’s present at the birthday party, the school, and the restaurant, one victim is a singular agent. Dan Fawcett raises chickens, making him a natural target in the animal revenge scenario. Also, we hear from captain Sholes, whose fishing boat is attacked by gulls – again, another natural target. Yet there is no explaining the episodes at the birthday party and school. In particular, one remembers a girl having fallen and a crow mounts and begins pecking her. She nearly becomes another Dan Fawcett. Why children? Because they carry the sins of Fawcett and Shales? The children’s innocence is slightly undercut when the birds attack them later. First, the crows congregate on the monkey bars, a children play site. Then we see the birds fly after the children, looking as if they are coming out of the schoolhouse.

But during the first massive attack, where many of the characters are at the restaurant, the most emotional death occurs elsewhere. Mitch and Melanie go to Annie’s house and see Annie on the front walk torn apart so much that we are spared sight of it (after Dan Fawcett’s closeup, there was no need). Based on the buildup, her death represents the film’s first great apotheosis, if not inevitable culmination.

We have learned that Annie had moved to Bodega Bay “to be near” Mitch, a sort of stalking in plain sight. Based on the Melanie-scale for bird provocation, Annie’s actions alone should have disturbed the avian community. Except that it hadn’t. The town’s acceptance (including the Brenners’) of her living in Bodega Bay testifies to the absence of social pressure and measures taken against her. Compared to Melanie’s preening precious beauty, Annie is down-to-earth, wholesome, and brunette. Only when Melanie arrives to challenge her non-relationship relationship with Mitch – that is, her emotional calm and complacency – do the birds find her with a vengeance. In a sense, we blame Melanie for agitating Annie, rather than looking askance at Annie’s emotionally problematic actions.

In Annie’s conversation with Melanie the night before, a gull smashes into the door of her house, Annie blames Mitch’s attachment to his mother as the reason she and Mitch didn’t marry. In an amazing bit of psychiatric double entendre, Annie refers to him as “our little Hamlet.” On the one hand, Freud’s Oedipus complex is perched nearby; yet, when she says this, one can’t help thinking the “Hamlet” is a reference to Bodega Bay. I mention this only because the town is the one place being attacked. The people being attacked harbor the “complex” and thus embody an emotional bird shitstorm!

Mitch’s relationship with his mother, Lydia, is less about attraction than devotion, as he takes up the responsibilities of his father. Sounds vaguely as if he’s married his mother. And we could dismiss our armchair Freudian observation were it not for the facial likenesses of Lydia and Melanie. Annie couldn’t compete against that.

Lydia is content emotionally until, of course, Melanie arrives. Worse, she’s brought into the house, and Lydia learns quickly that Melanie can’t be dispensed with as easily as Annie was. Initially, Lydia herself will not be attacked by the birds but will suffer their onslaught when she discovers Dan Fawcett’s body. This horrifying episode will provide the chance for Lydia and Melanie to get closer. She asks Melanie to check on Cathy at the school, which starts the major attack on the town.

I have written about Hitchcock mothers,5 taking a harsher view of them than I will here. I had perceived a common theme for Hitchcock characters’ mother issues: the mothers overly protect their sons and daughter (Marnie), to the extent of being neurotically clinging. Lydia clings to Mitch but not pathologically, and her effect on Mitch doesn’t foster malignant characteristics (as it does to Bruno Antony in Strangers on a Train). She prevents him from settling with a woman that he can love without the family baggage. More importantly, Lydia is afraid of not being able to deal with the world without a man around. This could be called “the human factor,” the natural response of a widow with a teenage daughter. It also smacks of post-World War II America, whence the society willfully shapes women’s dependence on men. Not that Melanie is better off that her mother abandoned her. Given their mutual dynamic, Mitch and Melanie seem perfect for each other, salving the mental scrapes and bruises perpetuated by the mothers.

Once Melanie enters the Brenners’ world, the birds (and the film) narrow their scope. Their first onslaught is a chaotic affair as various non-seagull or -blackbird birds enter through the chimney. Small birds, hundreds of them, thrash around in a blind fury, with no real targets discernible. They are simply making a mess, breaking the china plates and cups, such as we saw in Dan Fawcett’s kitchen. Afterward, as Lydia straightens her husband’s portrait on the wall, a dead bird drops from the frame’s top to the floor, momentarily startling Lydia. It subtly reminds us of the connection between the male-dominated society and the presence of the birds. Then, inevitable Hitchcock comic relief arrives in the form of a dim sheriff who wants to blame the Brenners for attracting the birds down the chimney. He can’t imagine that the attack was willful. But by being wrong and dim, he can’t help being right (the opposite of the cop in Psycho, who advises Marion Crane to stay in a motel to be safe). The Brenners had attracted the intruders within the cinematic, not rational, explanation.

The follow-up attack is perhaps the best in terms of tensions and for the images of the four people physically suffering despite not being touched by the birds (well, almost not touched: Mitch’s hand is pecked and bloodied trying to close a window shutter).

An aural onslaught was foreshadowed by the sounds of the opening credits. Not seeing the attackers instills greater fear, especially as the birds chip away at the front door. We are experiencing the apotheosis of the birds coming for specific targets. The family’s isolation from the world is complete. The attack commenced after Lydia expressed impatience over her son not being able to explain what is happening or come up with a solution. Why can’t he be like his father? The emotional cord has finally snapped between them. He’s free to move on with Melanie. Likewise, the last bird attack awaits when Melanie is making herself vulnerable. Lydia’s and society’s final say on the subject.

Of course, her vulnerability occurs through a classic horror trope. A single individual leaves the group to investigate some sounds in a nearby space. All audiences react similarly: Don’t go, please, spare us. How can you be so stupid? Haven’t you ever watched a horror film? Melanie goes upstairs with a flashlight and opens a bedroom door. Some bird noises. The flashlight reveals a gaping hole in the roof. The light agitates the birds and they come after it. Melanie is surprised and backs against the door, accidentally closing and blocking it.

Much has been written about the making of the scene. The character and actress both suffered egregiously. According to the IMDb trivia:

The climactic scene, in which Melanie (Tippi Hedren) is attacked in the bedroom, took seven days to shoot. Hedren said, “It was the worst week of my life.” The physical and emotional tolls of filming this scene were so strong on her that production was shut down for a week afterwards and Hedren ended up in the hospital.

Melanie is rendered unconscious and effectively quiet the rest of the film, with two exceptions:

1. lying on the couch as she regains consciousness, looking into the camera, she raises her arms to fight off an imaginary bird attack, or, perhaps, the presence of an audience gazing down on her.
2. being taken from the house to the car, a wonderfully tense scene as we anticipate her reacting to the thousands of birds on the porch, the ground, the trees and the wires (one blackbird bites Mitch’s hand, but he maintains self-control lest he disturb the horde).

In the car before Mitch backs it out of the garage, he turns on the radio and hears about other towns being attacked. Bodega Bay isn’t the only target, which gets Melanie off the hook, unless we blame her for initiating the “bird war.” We learn from the announcer that the community of Santa Rosa is under siege. How comforting to hear that another part of the Hitchcock cinematic universe is fighting off Nature’s beastly fury. And it would have been true to this universe had he gone through with a scene in which the Golden Gate Bridge was covered with birds, a modest tribute to the animus the film Vertigo (1958) exercises against Madeleine Elster and Judy Barton.

There we have it. Mitch and Melanie drive away (with the lovebirds), Lydia squeezing Melanie’s hand affectionately. Lydia now accepts the wounded, humbled Melanie as Mitch’s future wife. The women can confide over the way the world has treated them. Mitch will be allowed to hang around, doing his law thing (part of his practice depends on defending members of the criminal underworld), being a big brother to Cathy (surrogate child for him and Melanie?). This future, however, is uncertain. The story is not given the traditional movie sign: THE END. Test audiences apparently thought the film had broken. Why not think that? Leaving the basic conflict unresolved didn’t happen often in Hitchcock films. Even Norman Bates was “put away” and the threat removed. Not here. Screenwriter Evan Hunter apparently thought the same (he didn’t like the absence of music during the opening credits either, nor, in fact, the way Hitchcock ends the film!).

We’re left with the promise of another attack. And to wonder why this happened at all. Looking toward Melanie, we see she suffers from the attack. It seems obvious, though, that she causes them. How does an audience process the idea that the cause is the victim?6 Naturally, we go off in every direction looking for an answer rather than staying with what is before us. Melanie is the cause because she is OUR victim. The birds are us. The film, The Birds, is us.

Returning to the restaurant before and after the main attack, Hitchcock allows his characters to weigh in. The town drunk (Karl Swenson) interprets it Biblically. “It’s the end of the world!” He might be representative of a majority opinion, both past and present, reacting this way to a disturbingly violent event. Like the atom bomb or an invasion of Genghis Khan or the arrival of the bubonic plague. A traveling salesman offers a solution: “Get yourselves guns and wipe them off the face of the earth” and “Kill ’em all. Get rid of the messy animals.” Sholes remains skeptical: “Hell, maybe we’re all getting a little carried away with this. Admittedly a few birds did act strange, but that’s no reason to. . . .”

Then there’s Mrs. Bundy (Ethel Griffies), the ornithologist, who chimes in to tell Melanie and the salesman that they’re full of shit.

I have never known birds of different species to flock together. The very concept is unimaginable. Why, if that happened, we wouldn’t stand a chance! How could we possibly hope to fight them?

Her hard analysis scares the children in the place:

[T]here are 8,650 species of birds in the world today, Mr. Carter. It is estimated that 5,750,000,000 birds live in the United States alone. The five continents of the world . . . probably contain more than 100,000,000,000 birds!

She also corrects someone (Mitch) who doesn’t know the difference between crows and blackbirds, a piece of information that seems aimed at the audience (I wouldn’t know the difference). She will prove the biggest fool. She denies the plain fact of the attack on the school children, not wanting to admit her precious birds could be capable of murderous violence. After the big attack, she sits alone in silence and shame. If the film is us, Mrs. Bundy’s opinion and denial are ours. Only we aren’t denying avian violent potential, just our natural mechanism of recrimination that lies buried in our minds.

If we return to the opening scene, we hear the birds by the bay. Immediately before that, a man whistles at Melanie. She turns and smiles. The episode replicates a television commercial Tippi Hedren made in 1961 that got Hitchcock to notice and sign her to a contract. The sounds of the whistle and then from the birds come from the cinematic-media world, in that the bird cries and the whistle are mechanically created; more, the scene refers to the television world. This world ogles the model who receives the whistles. The ominous, spooky bird sounds here and later become analogous to the actions of the crowd. The bird attacks represent how society lets loose its emotional “knife” toward Melanie’s type. She’s a good-looking woman who looks real good while looking good, that is, knowingly being good-looking and inviting attraction.

If she is merely the object of our crazed attention, we might have an answer for the attacks. A cinematic explanation to inexplicable cinema events. Mrs. Bundy is useless on all scores. Complicating the matter is the way Hitchcock created Melanie’s almost physical birdlike disposition as part of her glamorous facade.

We’re already not sure we like this gal. And then, the first thing she actually does in the movie is lie.7

That facade must be stripped away. At the same time, our initial dislike of her is also worn down. Maybe we will soon believe we admire her pluck in making the town aware of the danger. But the birds keep coming. Our deep-seated resentment needs a reckoning.

She can remain the cause of it all and be our scapegoat. Only we punish her for being her good-looking self. This schism is embodied in the scene in the restaurant after the big attack. The woman with the scared kids (Doreen Lang) approaches Melanie.

Why are they doing this? Why are they doing this? They said when you got here the whole thing started. Who are you? What are you? Where did you come from? I think you’re the cause of all of this. I think you’re evil. EVIL!

Importantly, the mother speaks directly to the camera. To us. Then there’s a cut to Melanie. Then back to the mother, who is pointing. And back to Melanie. Whence, Melanie slaps her.

Recap: The mother blames Melanie, whose presence in town during the attacks seems not so coincidental. The mother seemingly blames us! We caused the attacks. When we arrived (at the theater, not Bodega Bay), the match is lit and the fuse burns down.

The movie is, literally, a projection of our mental landscape. We passively sit back (like Jeffries in Rear Window) and the world appears as we live and make it. We are Melanie, following her harrowing story, disliking her, then softening toward her, then terribly worried for her. We are the rest of the film’s characters, in that we remain supremely perplexed over the attacking birds (somewhat compelled to come up with ridiculous theses). Finally, most uniformly and unconsciously, we are the birds, unleashing our reservoir of vengeance, jealousy, and sanctimony.

What’s left for us but to be the film. Sharing with its creators the reality of our emotional chaos and denial of such. We cannot go on believing we are nothing but a part of a violent, intolerant crowd. We must go on believing an answer lies outside ourselves.

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Unless otherwise noted, all images are screenshots from the film.