"The unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates

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Resources:

• The Birds (1963) Review by Tim Dirks
  Tim Dirks provides an extensive analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's film complete with almost scene by scene details and critique. It is well-done and well worth reading.

• The Birds on the Internet Movie Database

Assignments

Movie Review

The Birds Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

So, what did you think about Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds? Please express your opinion about it and address the following topics in your essay:

• quality of the film

• level of enjoyment one should expect from seeing it

• would you recommend the film

• plot construction:

  • introduction

  • development of plot (introduction and increase of conflict)

  • climax

  • denouement

• theme (What was the movie all about?)

Do not feel you have to address these topics in order. Do not feel you have to address these topics one by one. You may mix the topics if you feel your paper will gain by it.

 Cast

• Mitch Brenner: Rod Taylor
• Melanie Daniels: Tippi Hedren
• Lydia Brenner: Jessica Tandy
• Annie Hayworth: Suzanne Pleshette
• Cathy Brenner: Veronica Cartwright

Characters and Relationships

What was your first reaction when this movie is over? You wanted more, didn't you? You wanted to see someone with a shot gun go after these birds. I'll bet you or someone you know thought about a flame thrower. What is it you really want from this movie when it is over? You want to see the war between the birds and humanity. I'll bet you didn't care who won as long as you got to see the carnage. You may be willing to accept that the climax has happened and the birds won, but you wanted a denouement that showed the resulting battle. This is because you thought the movie was about the birds. Hitchcock is trying to show you that you missed what the movie was all about. It was about the people.  There was a climax and it involved Melanie and Mitch's mother Lydia. They found a comfortable place for each other and the birds were the cause of it by stripping away the facade of cool independence from Melanie. There was even a denouement as we watch the now helpless Melanie placed in the car with Lydia who smiles beneficently down on Melanie while Melanie looks gratefully up at her new mother figure. 

Let's look at the central characters. There is Mitch, Lydia and Cathy in the Brenner family. Mitch and Cathy are brother and sister, but span different generations. Cathy is young enough that she could be his daughter. Lydia is a needy, grasping woman who feels threatened by any woman who might take Mitch away from her. Without any outside interference, they could form a family unit of mother, father figure, and child. The two women from the outside have come up against Lydia and also against Mitch. Lydia feels threatened by Melanie and even tells her so. Annie Hayworth tells Melanie about how she came up against Lydia and lost. Yet, Lydia says that Mitch has always done what he wanted. If this is so, Annie lost Mitch because their relationship wouldn't work, not because Lydia wished it to fail. How Melanie would fare in her relationship with Mitch is unknown because of the interruption of the attacking birds. The tension among the people in this group is palpable. Each is pulling and pushing in different directions, sometimes, like Mitch and Melanie, in different directions at the same time.

A possible interpretation for the film is that the birds represent the tension in the family and are a manifestation of Lydia's maternal possessiveness, attacking anyone who invades her territory. Several theories like these are outlined in William V. Costanzo's excellent book Reading the Movies: Twelve Great Films on Video and How to Teach Them (Urbana, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English (Publisher), 1992, p. 146). Trying to determine the explanation of the birds is an interesting exercise, but many of the theories do not stand up because they do not begin with the narrative focus of the film. The birds mass in San Francisco before Melanie ever meets Mitch and the first attack by the gull happens before Lydia is aware of Melanie's presence. There must be something else that drives the plot of this movie, but it is not Lydia or Mitch. It must be with the narrative focus given in the first scenes of the film, Melanie. Only Robin Wood's theory that the birds are a concrete reminder that life is ultimately precarious, arbitrary and absurd and quite possibly meaningless comes closest. (Costanza cites Wood from Wood's book Hitchcock's Films, New York: Tantivy Press.) I tend to lean towards the idea that the function of the birds is to remind us that control is an illusion and people who try to maintain that illusion are the ones hardest hit by the unpredictabilities of life. Melanie is such a person.

Melanie is a young woman who has gotten everything she has wanted. Melanie has conquered society. She intimidates almost everyone she meets, until she meets Mitch. It is at this point that Nature has a go at Melanie Daniels. However, with what in Nature is Melanie in conflict? Is it the birds or is it her natural feelings of warmth and love toward another person? Nature in the form of the birds will intimidate Melanie, but are the birds actually a manifestation of Melanie's fear of emotional relationship and her struggle with Mitch and with Lydia over Mitch. Which aspect of Nature causes the most conflict for Melanie, the attacking birds or her natural feelings for Mitch? Or are her emotional struggles really the same thing? The first gull attacks her when she realizes that she was successful in manipulating Mitch into following her. The gull that hits Annie Hayworth's door does so after Melanie decides she will go to Cathy's birthday party. Then there is the third attack.

The third episode is when the birds attack the children at the birthday party. This, the most violent attack so far in the movie, occurs after a conversation between Mitch and Melanie about the anger Melanie feels about being abandoned by her mother. After breaking down in tears, Melanie says that she should "join the other children" at the party. Both the birds and the emotional bond forming with Mitch help break her down. Each time the birds attack, Melanie's cool exterior is stripped away. Each succeeding attack will wear away at the sophisticated veneer that Melanie wears until she has lost it completely by the end of the story. Melanie will know that she is no longer in control by the end of the film.

By the end of the film there are no longer any illusions about Melanie being in control. Instead, she is in shock after a brutal attack in an upstairs room. Barely coherent, Melanie is completely dependent upon anyone who will help her. Now in a superior position, Lydia looks much more comfortable, even happy, in Melanie's presence. Melanie looks like the psychological child that she is resting her head on Lydia's shoulder in the car staring longingly into Lydia's eyes having finally found the mother she has been searching for.

An Astute Observation:
An astute student of mine, CR D., Class of '03, suggested that the conversation between Mitch and Melanie about Melanie's mother might be an explanation of why Lydia and Melanie look so much alike.  Perhaps, he reasoned, Lydia is Melanie's mother and Frank, Lydia's dead husband, is the "hotel man" she ran off with. This would add the element of Greek tragedy to the story and be an explanation  for why nature, or "the gods," was so angry. The potentially incestuous relationship between Mitch and Melanie was creating a rift in the fabric of society. It's an interesting theory, but it breaks down quickly. Mitch and Melanie would have to be drastically different ages and there would be more connection between the characters.

Mirrored Scenes:
Melanie and Lydia look remarkably alike. Students regularly pick up on this. There is more than just physical appearance. Melanie resents that she was abandoned by her mother and Lydia feels abandoned by her dead husband Frank and Mitch. Both women are ready to fight for Mitch. A classic Hitchcock touch is to make the audience feel complicit in the bad behavior of the characters. Early in the film, Melanie walks into the Brenner home without permission to deposit the love birds. She had no compunction about walking straight in and through the house as the audience watches and goes along with her. In a similar scene for Lydia, she walks right into Dan Forsyth's house in much the same manner.

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