The Birds (film)
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| The Birds | |
|---|---|
 Original movie poster |
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| Directed by | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Produced by | Uncredited: Alfred Hitchcock |
| Written by | Short story: Daphne du Maurier Screenplay: Evan Hunter |
| Starring | Introducing: Tippi Hedren With: Rod Taylor Jessica Tandy Suzanne Pleshette Veronica Cartwright Charles McGraw Ethel Griffies |
| Music by | Electronic score: |
| Cinematography | Robert Burks |
| Editing by | George Tomasini |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) |  March 28, 1963 |
| Running time | 119 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US$ 2,500,000 |
| Followed by | The Birds II: Land's End |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Birds (1963) is a horror film by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on the short story "The Birds" (ISBN 0-582-41798-8) by Daphne du Maurier. Hitchcock had earlier turned du Maurier's novel Rebecca into an acclaimed film. This horror film's innovative special effects, soundtrack, and style influenced later "revenge of nature" and zombie genre films.
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[edit] Plot
Beautiful and young Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) visits a pet shop in Union Square in San Francisco, because she wants to pick up her birds, which were arriving at the shop at 3 o'clock. However, the birds have not arrived yet, so she gives the shopkeeper her address as the shopkeeper is calling the people who are meant to deliver the birds. Melanie then meets Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), a lawyer who is looking for a pair of lovebirds to give to his sister. Outside gulls gather menacingly in nearby Union Square. Melanie pretends to be the shopkeeper and unsuccessfully attempts to show Mitch a canary. An amused Mitch reveals that he knows her actual identity, berates her for being a spoiled rich socialite and leaves. She decides to buy the lovebirds and deliver them to him the next morning at his apartment. Melanie learns that he is spending the weekend at his family home in Bodega Bay, a small coastal fishing town many miles north on the California coast.
Melanie drives to Bodega Bay in her Aston Martin DB2 and is directed to the home of Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), the local school teacher, to learn the name of Mitch's sister Cathy (Veronica Cartwright). She then travels across the bay by boat to the Brenner's house and secretly places the caged lovebirds in the living room. Mitch spots her leaving and follows her back to the dock in his truck. As she draws near the pier a gull swoops down and gashes her forehead. Mitch takes her to the Tides Cafe where he attends to her cut. There she is introduced to Lydia Brenner, Mitch's mother, (Jessica Tandy), who treats her coolly. Melanie dines with Mitch and his family during which Lydia complains that their chickens have not been eating and fears they may be ill.
After Mitch goads Melanie about her playgirl lifestyle she angrily zooms away in her car and rents a room in Annie's house for the evening. Mitch calls Melanie at Annie's and insist she come to Cathy's birthday party the next day. Annie offers Melanie a drink and during a casual discussion learns Annie has a history with Mitch. The women also discuss Mitch's difficulties with his mother. During the conversation they hear a thud against the front door and discover a dead gull sprawled on the porch.
During Cathy's outdoor birthday party, Mitch and Melanie go up a hill to look at the view of the bay, and Melanie discusses what kind of schedules she keeps during the week. She also mentions that her mother deserted the family and ran off to the East when she was Cathy's age and she's never seen her since. While going down the hill to join the other guests, a bird swoops down and gashes Cathy on the ear. Other birds attack the terrified children. More sporadic bird attacks occur including an attack on the Brenner house that evening. Mitch convinces Melanie to stay over for the night.
Bird attacks in the community increase both in scope and severity. The next day, Lydia discovers a dead neighbor with his eyes gouged out. Lydia fears for Cathy's safety and Melanie offers to pick her up at school. While waiting for Cathy at the school house, a large flock of crows attack the schoolchildren. Melanie leads them to safety then meets Mitch at the cafe.
A gull swoops down onto a nearby gas station attendant who drops the gas pump hose, releasing a trail of gasoline. The gas causes a shattering explosion as scores of birds attack the town. The local fire department soon arrives to fight the fire and ends up fighting the birds instead. Melanie is trapped by gulls in a telephone booth until rescued by Mitch.
After the attack Mitch and Melanie go to Annie's to pick up Cathy, where they find Annie pecked to death in her front yard. A terrified Cathy peers out from a window in Annie's house. Mitch, Melanie, and Cathy return to the Brenner house and board up all windows, doors, and openings. In this claustrophobic setting, the four spend hours wondering when the next attack will come. They fend off another bird attack and exhaustedly fall asleep in the living room.
Melanie, hearing the disturbing fluttering of wings, carefully examines the rooms. As she enters an attic bedroom, she spots a large hole ripped from the ceiling. The birds suddenly attack her from all sides. She is overcome by the birds, collapses onto the floor, and nearly dies from the attack before Mitch and Lydia can rescue her.
Realizing that she needs to get to a hospital Mitch ventures outside to get the car. In a surreal and apocalyptic scene a sea of landed birds ripples menacingly around him but do not attack. Mitch brings the car around and helps the women inside then drives away, parting waves of birds.
[edit] Production
The film depicts a series of bird attacks on the residents of a Californian seaside village named Bodega Bay. In du Maurier's story, the birds attacked Britain, not California.
Hitchcock was inspired by a report in the 18 August 1961 issue of the Santa Cruz, California Sentinel newspaper [1] of birds exhibiting strange and sometimes violent behavior. This behavior may have been caused by amnesic shellfish poisoning of the birds from eating fish containing domoic acid produced by the algae Pseudo-nitzschia australis.[2].
Hedren was told mechanical birds would be used for the terrifying and brutal attic scene. Instead, live birds were hurled at her by prop men for a week. When one nearly gouged her eye she became hysterical, collapsed and spent a week haunted by "nightmares filled with flapping birds". After visiting the set Cary Grant praised her as "one very brave lady".
Instead of a typical film soundtrack, Hitchcock painstakingly had Oskar Sala create bird sounds on his trautonium, which were then scored to the movie by Bernard Herrmann. The fact that there are no natural bird sounds makes it of interest to the field of musicology. There is a very high-pitched soundtrack of electronic noise through the film which subconsciously adds to the tension experienced by the viewer.
Hitchcock insisted that the film not end with final "The End", which further hints towards the lyrical nature of the movie (quote by Federico Fellini: "An apocalyptical poem"). Another film critic — in the documentary All About The Birds — described the ending as "self-consciously 'European' in its lack of resolution".[citation needed]
The highly-anticipated film was launched with an elaborate promotional campaign, inaugurated with the Hitchcock-engineered phrase, "The birds is coming!" Hitchcock appeared with birds on his shoulder on the cover of Life magazine. Hedren appeared on the cover of Look magazine with the line "Hitchcock's New Grace Kelly."
A sequel to the film was produced for cable TV in 1994 under the title The Birds II: Land's End. The sequel starred Brad Johnson and Chelsea Field; Tippi Hedren appeared in a supporting role, playing a different character than in the original film.
[edit] Analysis
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This section on the film's analysis may contain original research or unattributed claims. Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the talk page for details. |
In the movie, Hitchcock never explains literally why the birds attack humans. The attacks may be interpreted by the viewer metaphorically. Attacks are apparently associated with elements of human behaviour, such as unrequited love, sexual tension, sexual flirtation, the inability to be sincere and honest, or the small town's unfriendliness towards outside visitors.
The attacks only begin when Melanie arrives in Bodega Bay, something directly stated in dialogue by a hysterical mother in a restaurant. Melanie arrived there to pursue Mitch, to whom she is sexually attracted, bringing a gift of lovebirds — ostensibly for Mitch's sister. The caged birds remain conspicuously benign through the entire film as all other birds go wild, and continue to be featured in the story until the closing scene, when they accompany the escaping humans.
Although The Birds angered and baffled many critics and disappointed some audiences members who were expecting another Psycho, the film's reputation and stature have grown to classic status in succeeding decades.
[edit] Awards
- The film debuted at a prestigious invitational showing at the Cannes Film Festival with Alfred Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren present.
- The movie was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Special Effects.
- Tippi Hedren received the Golden Globe for her acting in this movie, as the most promising newcomer of 1964. She shared this award with Ursula Andress and Elke Sommer.
[edit] The Birds in popular culture
- After the film's release, a famous Mad magazine parody appeared entitled "For the Birds."
- In an episode of Animaniacs, the Goodfeathers sign onto the filming of a movie called "The Boids" as extras. The episode includes caricatures of Hitchcock, Hedren, and Jack Nicholson.
- In an episode of That '70s Show, in a Halloween episode dream sequence, Kitty, while feeding her neighbor's bird, is trapped inside a phone booth and attacked by dozens of birds.
- In Mel Brooks' movie High Anxiety (1978) he parodies several Hitchcock films, including The Birds, when birds "attack" him by excreting on him.
- The Simpsons makes several references to The Birds:
- In "A Streetcar Named Marge", when Maggie is picked from the day-care center, babies are perched all over the building. When Homer and the kids leave, a caricature of Hitchcock is walking his dogs on the sidewalk (a recreation of his cameo; see below).
- In the episode "Itchy & Scratchy Land", Marge wishes the family had gone to the bird sanctuary. However, in the bird sanctuary, the birds have gone crazy, and Hans Moleman is menaced by birds in a phone booth, with birds crashing against the glass.
- In the "Treehouse of Horror XI" segment "Night of the Dolphins", the invading dolphins stand on their tails on the power lines.
- In the episode "Homer vs. Dignity", the citizens of Springfield are attacked by gulls.
- The film Finding Nemo has a scene with the seagulls perched everywhere, reminiscent of the birds outside the school house.
- In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius episode "When Pants Attack", swarms of pants gather and pants are fluttering onto telephone lines, and Jimmy's mother states "It's like a homage to Alfred Hitchcock's movie 'The Birds'!"
- On the children's television show Arthur, an episode titled "The Squirrels" (2006), Arthur and his friends are terrified after watching a horror film about squirrels attacking people.
- In one of The Far Side comics created by Gary Larson it shows a small flock of birds hidden behind a tree near an old woman feeding squirrels. One of the birds, presumably the leader, says, 'Hey, I have an idea. How many people here have seen Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds?' and most of the surrounding birds raise one wing.
- In an episode of Roseanne, an American sit-com from the early-90s, the character of Roseanne's daughter, Darleen, dresses for Halloween as a woman being attacked by birds in an echo of the famous scene with Tippi Hedren.
- On Mystery Science Theater 3000, the Mads sometimes declare "We're Evil! EVIL!" mimicking the diner patron who accuses Melanie of causing the birds' attack, making The Birds one of countless films referred in the jokes of the show. In Episode #603, The Dead Talk Back, a movie character speaking of a murder victim proclaims "She was evil!" to which Mike Nelson adds "She brought the birds here!" In Episode #801, Revenge of the Creature, a scene opens in a lagoon with various wildlife, including birds perched on limbs, and Tom Servo sings a bar or two of the song sung by the schoolchildren in The Birds ("Nickety nockety now now now!").
- There was an episode on The Maury Povich Show dealing with specific phobias. One woman was afraid of birds. (The fear of birds is called ornithophobia.) When Maury asked her why she was so scared of them, she said, "I was just too young to watch that movie; Alfred Hitchcock's, The Birds."
- Saturday Night Live spoofed the famous school-children/bird attack sequence with a mock movie trailer for a "film" entitled The Clams. It featured dozens of chattering clam shells on the schoolyard jungle gym, and giant clam shells pursuing the school-children.
[edit] Trivia
- Billed as "a fascinating new personality", Hedren was a fashion, print, and TV commercials model discovered by Hitchcock and his wife Alma Reville when they saw Hedren on The Today Show in a commercial for a weight-loss drink called Sego.
- The screenplay for The Birds was written by Evan Hunter, also known as crime fiction novelist Ed McBain
- The school house is actually several miles from Bodega Bay. Matte paintings were used to place the school closer to the bay. As of November 21, 2006 it is a private residence.
- Suzanne Pleshette told the press she was so excited by the chance to be directed by Alfred Hitchcock, "I would have played one of the birds."
- Rod Taylor told the press that Hitchcock would customarily greet him on the set with ambiguous phrases like, "Well, Rodney, old bean. Today we lead some more sheep."
- Alfred Hitchcock's cameo in The Birds can be seen (2 minutes into the film) when Hitchcock exits a pet shop with two dogs on a leash. The dogs were Hitchcock's own dogs Geoffrey and Stanley.
- Alfred Hitchcock was interviewed in the early 1970s by TV talk-show host Dick Cavett. Cavett commented that he did not like how The Birds had ended and asked Hitchcock what the next cinematic shot should be after the family drives away from the farmhouse. Hitchcock replied that it would have been the Golden Gate Bridge covered with birds. He added with bemusement that it would have been too expensive to film.
- This film was #96 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.
- This film might loosely be based on an actual story, where birds near a fishing town ate dinoflagellates that caused them to act irregularly and caused them crash into buildings and phone booths, just like in the movie
[edit] See also
- The Birds - The upcoming remake
[edit] Listen to
- Radio Memories Network: Lux Radio Theater: The Birds with Herbert Marshall (July 20, 1953)
- Radio Nostalgia Network: Escape: "The Birds" (July 10, 1954)
[edit] External links
- The Birds at the Internet Movie Database
- The Birds (1963) at Alfred Hitchcock Fans Online
