If you’ve seen Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS (1963), then you saw our fine-feathered friends’ mad and eerie majesty. This 49th film by the acclaimed director (his first for Universal-International Studios) is the watershed fantasy about nature taking its revenge; a flight-of-fancy which flew into theaters a dozen years before that summer blockbuster JAWS (1975).

Stir-frying nightmare and fantasy into a ground-breaking motion picture took film audiences where they had never gone before. Dramatizing the theme of paranoia without defining it, Hitchcock used the simplest conceit: How can you catch or stop such an enemy as birds always on the move and multiple, unpredictable…and kamikaze?

Hitchcock actually shuns the question by keeping viewers on edge with what could almost be seen as satire, if it were not so deadly. Darkly amusing yet somehow plausible by the utter randomness of the attacks with all the deft and precision of a killing machine, the apocalyptic feathered onslaught combine the director’s wry humor (lovebirds innocently chirping, having harmed no one) with primeval terror.

An unsettling memento of its era, the film unleashes a spooky, unknowable force in the natural world to threaten stability of a family and their community with unsuspected danger gathering all around them, and no one adequately protected from those killer beaks; a premise that might appear silly on paper but filmed with bone-chilling believability and Hitchcock’s promise: “It could be the most terrifying motion picture I have ever made.”

To say, “an instant classic” is to commit an oxymoron. But if you can clearly remember a movie after more than four decades, it means that film is pretty special. Still, nowadays birds hardly seem a topic of terror, and yet as a movie it’s impossible to ignore.

But we’re getting ahead of the story….

THE STORY: The 40-page short story, “The Birds” by Daphne du Maurier first published in 1952 is set in Cornwall along a peninsula in an English seaside village just after World War II; and told from the perspective of Nat Hocken, a disabled war veteran and farm-hand living in a cottage with his wife and two children. The winter weather with its biting East wind has gone from mild to freezing when Nat witnesses some birds acting oddly; but with the coming season, he assumes their behavior is a function of nature—until attacked by a “frightened” feathered vertebrate, seemingly harmless. But, later, when the peacefulness of his home is shattered throughout the night by an avian assault, fifty dead birds are left on the floor by morning.

Could they be hungry? Assuming this peculiar occurrence resulted from the creatures’ reaction to that sudden change in weather, Nat goes to the beach to dispose of the cadaverous fowl; and, while waiting for the tide, he witnesses a chillingly “dark cloud” formed by tens of thousand of seagulls flocking to come ashore. Something more than hunger has caused this alarming change in the birds. Returning home, he hunkers down with his family, listening to the BBC radio broadcast with news of birds bombarding Britain, at which time Nat decides to block every entry point into their single-story dwelling, including the chimney. Later, picking up his daughter at a bus stop, Nat comes under the shadow of gulls—descending, their beaks striking. With his child in tow, he retreats into the cottage, sustaining only minor injuries; the swarm strafing the house, recklessly smashing into the structure, as a broadcast declares “a national emergency” calling for all residents not to leave their homes, as the birds continue nonstop their mindlessly immolation. Behind boarded doors and windows, Nat and his family for a while listen to radio reports of similar chaos across the country, rumors that the Russians have poisoned the birds to make them vicious and suicidal. Soon after they hear the rapid report of gunfire from combat aircraft overhead, a squadron of the Royal Air Force dispatching the demons, when the engines choke, becoming clogged with winged carcasses followed by sounds of planes crashing into the sea. Nat’s wife wonders if America will send reinforcements, as the bird’s vigor and hostility remit. Could the ebb and flow of the tide be affecting the timing of the attacks? Nat speculates that the high water levels might be bringing the initial movement of that predatory force. If so, the tides are eternal. When will it ever stop? Venturing outside, the grounds covered with lifeless birds, Nat takes note of the hundreds still alive; the ones observing him from a distance, as he ambles toward the farmhouse of his employer whom he finds (along with his wife) dead from an earlier assault.

The entire community showing no signs of life, Nat quickly returns home. The radio is dead now. Once again, he listens to that awful sound of splintering wood, the predators resuming their siege. Smoking his last cigarette, wondering what is behind the creatures’ willfulness to destroy mankind, he’s left with only “the birds” clamoring to come inside.

THE AUTHOR:

“The Birds” is a humorless parable about the threat of total annihilation, a metaphor for nature thrown out of balance by warfare.  The “east wind” connected to the bird attacks implies the Cold War that embroiled The West and froze relations with the U.S.S.R. during the 1950s. This notion of birds growing hostile during a harsh winter with little food occurred to Dame Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989) while watching a farmer plowing his field, with seagulls wheeling and diving in sorties just above his head. Thus inspired, the author developed the notion of these gulls becoming hostile in provoking both pity and terror. Because they can break windows, peck through roofs and doors, the birds appear all-powerful and, inexplicably, terrifying.

 Du Maurier (“Lady Browning”) began her writing career in 1928. Her boldly masculine style she attributed to male energy confirmed in letters unveiled posthumously in regards to Lady Browning’s bisexuality together with homophobic fear of her true nature. Perhaps, here’s why “The Birds” offers a bright lure hinting at something darkly hidden, fascinating yet repellent with no hope, no protection, no defense but to run away and hide from this deadly reality. 

 

THE DIRECTOR: Alfred Hitchcock’s films (at their best) are psychological suspense thrillers, notable for deliberate pacing, careful to establish mood and atmosphere with often tongue-in-cheek treatment of settings and characters. As a stylist, Hitch favors long takes, deep-focus photography, detailed mise-en-scène and wide panoramic compositions. A recurring theme is the relationship between the victim struggling for mastery over hopeless, an unstable perpetrator’s shifting dynamic that often leads to sudden violence, power relations between characters, an ironic occurrence of events and reversal of fortune.

He also popularized the plot device known as “the MacGuffin”—now common enough in movie thrillers—characteristically an object whose importance is accepted immediately by the central protagonist and villain, both in pursuit of “it” through what appears an endless maze of complications and deceptions, impelling the hero toward clarification and finally an end result.

The seagulls and crows in THE BIRDS have no real basis in fact, except for being the MacGuffin with and peaks and a substantial impact upon the story. The bird attacks as a plot device do not dissipate in importance by the end of the first act; indeed, all struggle and motivation for the characters are heightened by the unknowable intent of Hitchcock’s real stars—those scene-stealing vertebras not easily forgotten. Even if not the director’s best work (many aficionados regard the film as a benign blemish on his impressive filmography) it retains its legion of enthusiastic admirers and a big moment in film history. But is it the highest point in the director’s storied career? The answer is just ahead.

THE EAL EVENT: Rather than rely solely upon Daphne du Maurier’s short story, Alfred Hitchcock investigated an actual incident of avian behavior based on a bizarre real life event. A water-soluble amino acid called Domoic Acid is found in various marine algae; it’s potent and an often deadly neurotoxin in humans when consumed through contaminated mussels, clams, crabs, and anchovies. This chemical is produced when plankton is exposed to urea, a chemical known to leak out of septic tanks. Contamination can then pass up the food chain, resulting in an adverse effect upon the nervous system of predatory animals—like birds.

The 27 October 2008 issue of Nature magazine gave an account of birds on 18 August 1961 that had residents of Capitola, California. Waking up to find sooty Shearwater seabirds slamming into rooftops, the city’s streets were left littered with dead medium-large fowl. A Santa Monica newspaper account carried the black-ink headline: Seabird Invasion Hits Coastal Homes.

Hitchcock requested the news copy, which he planned to use as “research material” for his upcoming thriller. He then tried to hire Joseph Stefano (screenwriter of PSYCHO) to penned the script, but Stefano wasn’t interested in the story. Evan Hunter (THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE, 1955) was given the job instead—more on this later.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK: The tale of nature in revolt and its visual potential appealed to director Alfred Hitchcock, who enjoyed a close relationship with the Du Maurier family. Most of all, it suited Hitchcock’s métier. A visceral predicament treated intelligently, the central focus of the story immediately suggested a myriad of cinematic possibilities.

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (1899-1980) engineered the psychological thriller and horror/fantasy film genres following his filmmaking pursuits in Great Britain and later Hollywood, directing over fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades. Drawing heavily and equally upon pace and control of the film narrative, Hitchcock perfected the technique of inciting fear unrivaled among his contemporaries, spicing the proceedings with dry wit, and fashioning ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances that motivate the characters to advance the plot. 

Hosting the anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents from October 1955 to 1965 the reputed “Master of Suspense” continued to produce and direct significant feature-length motion pictures with unprecedented creative freedom while sharing in the profits with Paramount Pictures.

NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959) has been called “the first James Bond movie,” given the film’s quit-witted leading man, leading lady repartee, splashy leitmotif, elegant milieu, foreign intrigue bona fides, and unbelievable daring-do. In fact, on the strength of this flick, Hitchcock had been offered the chance to direct a screenplay by producer Kevin McClory, screenwriter Jack Whittingham and author Ian Fleming based on a story by Ernest Cuneo—which Hitchcock read and was keen to direct.  

However, the producers’ concerns about his high minimum salary and mandatory control over the picture were mooted when Hitch passed on the  “Thunderball” project—because it was during this time when certain “B-movies” were being independently produced on low budgets with a high degree of craft and aesthetic ingenuity (INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHER, 1956) or simply prurient exploitation uninhibited by constraints typically imposed on more expensive movies (A BUCKET OF BLOOD, 1959) without the earnestness of conventional art films (LA DOLCE VITA, 1960). Even hardscrabble moviemakers like William Castle (HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, 1959) succeeded despite being panned by critics. He along with other lowbrow schlockmeisters feeding on the underbelly of the film business obviously learned from those in the 1940s, who had successfully tried their hand at imitating Hitchcock. By 1960 Castle had seized the mantle.  Whether or not this prompted Hitchcock to walk away from his chance to direct the first Bond movie in order to retake the mantle, the acclaimed director reinvented himself by producing his most famous work. PSYCHO (1960) would not be a glossy star-turned Hollywood thriller, but one he would have to self-produce; a small movie (that Paramount Pictures didn’t believe in) shot in black & white on a spare set with unprecedented violence, early demise of the heroin/protagonist with the focus then shifting to a psychologically deranged murderer.

Hitchcock did all this without graphic gore or sexual violence while reacquiring his cinematic standing in an industry that had become increasingly individual yet more complex.

“Style,” Hitchcock intoned, “is self-plagiarism.”

 THE ADAPTATION: Inarguably, literature is composed by the author to do what a movie cannot do: enable the reader to flip the pages and then flip back to see where the text connects with certain details. But the average motion pictures does what it’s suppose to do, drag everyone along at 24 frames per second using action and visuals, giving the audience little opportunity to reflect, at least upon first viewing, except the fate-decreed of very bad things happening to very good people.  

“The Birds” as written by Daphne du Maurier during the post-World War II era was an Orwellian way of looking at the world: no fight being proper when you deal with innumerable and massive attacks—the author’s warning about the “modern world” utterly helpless in the face of mounting warriors who do not fight according to commonly accepted rules of engagement, methods and laws.

Although transferring the written word into a feature film is as common as the development of an original screenplay, the derivative used by Hitchcock upon which to base his motion picture took only the title of Du Maurier’s story and its central conceit of birds going berserk, sharing none of the author’s philosophy or narrative weight.

The director with his novelist/screenwriter Evan (“Ed McBain”) Hunter relocated Du Maurier’s rustic tale of murderous bird from the British Isles to Northern California but under a similar set of circumstances with equally provincial characters, capturing the rural milieu including a murdered farmer, a besieged family, incomprehensible panic and inexplicable horror. It’s all done thoughtfully, providing insight into ordinary human frailties. The story here presented is that of a feisty San Francisco heiress turning up in the fish bowl community of Bodega Bay in hot pursuit of an eligible bachelor—only to find the town under siege by birds—going from light romantic comedy (a beautiful blonde who has designs on a handsome lawyer) to quasi-melodrama (the lawyer’s possessive mother wounded by a Freudian sense of abandonment) to hard-scrabbled tragedy (the lawyer’s former lover now hapless voyeur of his new budding romance) to supernatural fantasy (seagulls and crows drastic for self-destruction).

Using cinematic grammar, Hitchcock visually unfurls an intelligent, coherent tale by building tension without too much graphic scenario. Just as JAWS wasn’t about the shark but more the shape of that damn thing in the water, his movie is not about birds killing with raptor-like efficiency, but our compulsion to look up into the sky. By exploring the human element deepens the subtext, so whatever drives the narrative (other than the functional intent of special effects) sustains and satisfies the audience.

The reputed “Master of Suspense” created hallmarks for a whole new genre of what would become known as “high concept” filmmaking with THE BIRDS. A mind-blowing, game-changing turn of events with a clear story to cling to, Hitchcock boldly deviated from expectations and risked alienating his core fan base. But without going too far—just enough for moviegoers back in the day to say, “Hey, that’s cool.” Clearly, fans of the director never revered Hitch because they were supposed to.

Filmed in 1961 after extensive preproduction, the movie required two years to complete post-production with nearly 400 effect shots before its 1963 release. Utilizing hundreds of segments that mixed actual and animated sequences with mechanical birds along with optically altered film overlay of flying birds—enough to thrill and frighten.

No film before portrayed a group of animals so disturbingly, creatures working so believably together, without tempting the audience to giggle. And how can they? The sound design accentuates the increasing ornithological mayhem that adds to the rapid sense of discombobulation.

Technically, the director at the pinnacle of his formidable skills aptly showcased his purest cinematic achievement: a textbook of brilliantly edited set pieces and ingenious uses of color, sound, and landscape that convey the admixture of stark panic and blank astonishment in what essentially amounts to a character-driven narrative, and yet no other Hitchcock film so thoroughly overrides its cast. Not that the human actors are superfluous to the story as much as they become naturally sublimated by the murky and veiled motivations of the birds, the audience seems urged to forget everything else.

Hitchcock withholds the customary on-screen title card “THE END”. By ending the film without ending it brings that sense of waking up from a nightmare, delivering an emotional impact that will likely stay with you for quite some time.

THE MOVIE: Blue credit titles appear against a white field then rapidly destroyed by the mad rush of flapping wings in silhouette. Taking flight into limbo, the soaring presence with loudly upsetting screeches sounds the alarm…until all dissolves into….

The streets of San Francisco where a bird-like woman, Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) the only child of a wealthy newspaper owner becomes perched inside a pet shop, quite mannerly she chirps to the store clerk about a myna bird that she ordered—when a handsome young attorney, Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) wanders in, deliberately mistaking Melanie for the clerk. She plays along when he ask to see a pair of lovebirds, that is until Mitch reveals that he knew who she was all along, recognizing her from a recent court appearance involving a “practical joke” that backfired and resulted in damaging a storefront window.

Realizing how he has played her for a fool, Melanie is incensed yet intrigued, deciding to get back at him—by first writing down his license plate number as he drives off, then buying those lovebirds he requested. Finally learning his address, which comes with the knowledge that he spends his weekends in Northern California at Bodega Bay, a small coastal community, Melanie rents an outboard motor boat and propels across the bay to the Brenner home.

Cool-headed in the face of her impulsively shortsighted decision, she sneaks into the house (presently unoccupied) deposits the lovebirds on a foot stool with a note attached then returns to the boat.

Shortly, Mitch discovers the “gift”; alerted to Melanie heading back across the bay, he jumps into his car, sprints around the waterway, now greets her with a smug grin. But as she motors toward the wharf, just about to dock, a seagull squeals. Swooping with downward fury, traveling with the muscular ghastliness of a pointed beak, the bird gashes Melanie’s head! And an identifiable villain gives the plot forward momentum.

 Ditching the antiwar message of Du Maurier’s story, Hitchcock presided over a broken family twisted by their damaged psyches and repressed sexual desires. Mitch Brenner, a San Francisco lawyer, though charming and handsome, has nothing about him to suggest being incapable of maturing beyond the atrophy of spending every weekend away from his life in the city at home with his mother in a bedroom community. Behavior one might expect from a small boy amounts to impulsive devotion in Mitch Brenner, a benevolent throwback to Hitchcock’s protagonist “Norman Bates” in PSYCHO.

Mitchell Brenner had an abbreviated relationship with Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette) truncated by his neurotic mother, Lydia (Jessica Tandy) a woman chronically depressed since the death of her husband four years before. She clings desperately to her son, and jealously, daring any woman to show him the least bit of affection. It recalls Norman Bates, of course, but moreover Sigmund Freud’s Oedipus complex and that mythical King of Thebes who killed his father and marred his mother—thus bringing disaster upon his city and family…not at all dissimilar to the disaster besieging the community of Bodega Bay and the Brenner household. Annie incredulously dismisses Mitch’s momma’s boy fixation with the throwaway line: “Apologies to Dr. Freud, but that’s not the problem.”

Indeed, it is the problem. And into this unsettled familial universe arrives the clipped spoken, frigidly vain Melanie Daniels with “lovebirds” to begin a flirtation with Mitch that seems destined for the same failure that scuttled his romantic entreaties toward Annie. Over the course of a weekend, Melanie registers keenly with Lydia as blond, toxic catnip; a young woman on an emotional tightrope navigating these personalities, including Mitch’s 11-year old sister, Cathy (Veronica Cartwright) informed by a bond forged out of fear and a crucible of horror.

It gradually develops how feckless humans have been put under the determined threat of the birds with Melanie the eloquent witness to the gathering paranoia while gasping to understand the unknowable made all the more terrifying by not knowing why the birds are attacking.

Lifting the film above its absurdity are those fabled Hitchcockian sequences, like crows massing on the jungle-gym at the center of the Bodega Bay schoolyard; the sound of wings flapping, dread being carried on the wind.

From inside the schoolhouse, Annie Hayworth is leading the children in a sprightly, if somewhat innocuous, sing-song: I married my wife in the month of June. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, Mo, mo mo! I carried her off in a silver spoon. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, hey bombosity, knickety-knackety, retro-quo-quality, willoby-wallaby, Mo, mo, mo! She combed her hair but once a year. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, Mo, mo, mo! With every rake, she shed a tear. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, hey bombosity, knickety-knackety, retro-quo-quality, willoby-wallaby, Mo, mo, mo!

 The “Risselty Rosselty” tune penned by scriptwriter Evan Hunter is based on an old nursery rhyme. Between each refrain, the portent of birds massing in the school yard evokes a Grimm fairy: Melanie Daniels waiting outside to take Cathy home, smoking her cigarette and oblivious of the crows gathering on the jungle gym behind her—until the rails have swelled with menacing blackness. Without upsetting Satan’s spawn, Melanie hurries to warn Annie not to let the student into the yard; and then together they lead the children out the building when, shortly, hearing feet padding on the pavement (the children told to run) awakens the crows into flight, soaring behind the schoolhouse in high flashes of dark horror.

Another memorable scene follows those upsetting climatic moments in the second-floor bedroom (reducing Melanie to a virtual zombie) when Mitch, now resolved to escape the town and get her much needed medical attention, opens the front door of the house on hundreds of birds. A constellation of different species perched on the porch, the roof, the phone lines and as far as the eye can see do not attack; their casual vigil and elegant menace defines the unpredictability of natural phenomenon. Surprisingly, the birds of Bodega Bay allow Melanie, Mitch and his family their escape in the Aston Martin, the sports car slowly picking up speed. Remarkably, they get away, yet the birds with bemused triumph win the day; chattering, their wings fluttering with unsettling applaud, leaving open the possibility of continued terror.

‘TIPPI’ HEDREN:

Spotting her in a TV soda pop commercial for a diet drink, Hitchcock immediately signed ornamental fashion model Nathalie Kay (“Tippi”) Hedren to an exclusive 7-year movie contract and, within months, cast her as the lead in his upcoming film—a sublime choice. By this time the director’s penchant for casting blond-haired actresses (Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, and Janet Leigh among others) had grown legendary. Still, before Ms Hedren, none among his cinematic harem had he taken as seriously—and so far away from reality that his obsession could carry him.

The cast of THE BIRDS treated the newcomer well enough, though something about Hitchcock’s rigid assistant, Peggy Robertson disturbed Ms Hedren. Nevertheless, she soon discovered that Ms Robertson (and those pesky birds) would prove the least of her worries.

ROD TAYLOR:

The easygoing leading man in the role of “Mitch” (“Hitch”?) not only received a tetanus shot after being pecked numerous times by his avian co-stars, the actor also became the brunt of Hitchcock’s rebuke—perhaps for having the honorary, if necessary, pleasure of sparking Tippi Hedren’s romantic interest on screen.

But the pain and physical violence done to Ms Hedren at the behest of her director could not be defined entirely in terms of Hitchcock’s coldness and cruelty, despite considerable control he had over the actress, because soon his mood and desire would switch and thereby distinguish a separate inclination.

 'TIPPI' AND HITCH: In so many of his movies, Hitchcock’s fair-haired heroine always appear cool until properly aroused by sensual stimulation then passionately responsive before giving in to animal behavior. Given her proper due with all others characters appearing less important suit the story’s dramatic purpose. But it was Hitchcock’s “cool blonde” approach in real life that informed his profound inamorata toward the quiet grandeur and feminine mystique of Tippi Hedren, upon whom he became unnaturally fixated, ordering his star a complete wardrobe for the film and for her personal life. Spies employed by the director kept watch on the actress whenever she left the film set; this no doubt frightened her far more than “the birds” scared the audience. He even went so far as to pressure Ms Hedren to drink martinis during rehearsal. And yet nothing upset her nearly as much as shooting the climatic scene of the movie.

 During the last week of shooting, the final bird attack in a second-floor bedroom (filmed on a closed set at Universal Studios) Tippi Hedren had been assured by Hitchcock that “mechanical” birds would be used. However, she walked out of her trailer and into a giant cage filled with ravens. And for a week, Ms Hedren lay on the floor, her body covered by a host of fowl unable to fly away because they had been attached to her dress by long nylon threads. She endured two prop men wearing thick, protective leather gloves, like gauntlets up to their shoulders, bunching the birds in one concentrated burst; flinging dozens of live seagulls and crows at her, their beaks clamped shut. Ravaged each day by the birds, Ms Hedren endured the director’s self-conscious sado-masochistic Freudian ritual for the entire week. Only when an errant raven flew directly into her face did Ms Hedren tell the director that she could not take any more, and her suffering finally stopped, as she sat in a tearful state of exhaustion.

Cary Grant, visiting the set, told Ms Hedren: “I think you’re the bravest lady I’ve ever met.”

Hitchcock’s perverse mischief and mistreatment of Ms Hedren resulted in the actress’s hospitalization, the production shutting down after the studio physician ordered a week’s rest—but one riddled with nightmares, according to Ms Hedren, “filled with flapping wings.” To even conceive such a scene, so fundamental in its brutality, that final sequence most grim required unnerving sadism unlike anything else in the Hitchcock canon. The grueling five-day ordeal quickly grew into legend.

“For a first film, it was a lot of work,” she later reflected, telling how dangerous and taxing the so-called bird attack had been. “Really, the worst week of my life.” An established actress, Hitchcock biographer Donald Spoto observed, would have never submitted to this extreme abuse.

 Five months following the release of the THE BIRDS Hitchcock began shooting MARNIE (1964). A character not unlike Melanie Daniels, the title character is young and beautiful with carefully coifed blond hair, an almost bird-like character smart and assertive, if troubled by a painful childhood. Tippi Hedren in her second feature film for Hitchcock—off to a good but rocky start—vividly depicted sexual frigidity amid the darkness of human emotions, and psychological turmoil hidden deep within a troubled woman who has an unnatural fear and mistrust of men, thunderstorms and the color red.

After passing up nearly every A-list actress in Hollywood who had expressed keen interest in the role, Hitchcock offered the part of “Marnie Edgar” to Ms Hedren while they were still shooting THE BIRDS. Amazed the director offered her such an “incredible role” which Ms Hedren called that “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” she would learn it came at an exorbitant price, as the director’s interest in his star grew passionate, professional distance became finite, and artistic inquiry turned less and less on matters film-related.

  Emotionally invested, Hitchcock increasingly preoccupied himself with propositioning the actress, showing the kind of enthusiasm that a director usually reserves for shooting a movie. He built her a lavish trailer (complete with a bar) in which he would engineer private meetings, freely sending bottles of champagne (every day) with admission that Ms Hedren was the greatest actress in his long career together with confessions of his love for her. “Don’t you understand that you’re everything I’ve ever dreamed about?” he swooned with panting lust.  She would laugh off these over-the-top declarations of affection. But the more she did so, the more domineering he became. For example, when Ms Hedren asked for a long weekend off to accept a Most Promising Newcomer Award in New York, he refused her permission.  Nearing the end of production, by which time Ms Hedren had rejected all of the director’s entreaties, Hitchcock professionally abandoned her, ending their association with mutual disappointment and sustained bitterness.  

MARINIE would marked the last time that a “Hitchcock blonde” would have a central role in his films.

THE PRODUCTION: In 1961 Hitchcock found a remote and bleak coastal location without the interference from trees or mountains for his new motion picture project, THE BIRDS. He chose Bodega Bay’s naked sprawl and quiet fishing harbor: giving the director what he needed most—clear shots of the sky where hundreds of birds could be airborne; the skyline subdued and open but also an area that could be counted on for foggy weather, and ice-blue terrifying birds forging a hold on the community with loud squawks and hard beaks.

However, when time came to shoot, Hitchcock despaired over clear and sunny skies. “It’s a color film,” he said, “and I wanted it dark and gloomy. Now we’ll have to subdue the color in the film lab.” Insufficient natural fog required most of the lensing to be filtered with a gray tint. But unlike any motion picture before it or during its era, THE BIRDS is noteworthy for what it lacks: the movie offers no ending. The implied cause of the bird attacks in Du Maurier’s literary account suggests the rising tides. Hitchcock’s film version offers no answers whatsoever beyond a mysterious series of attacks coinciding with the extemporaneous arrival of a beautiful blonde—an ambiguous reply that merely emphasizes those forces unknown.

The director had written—but chose not to film—a closing chase sequence between Melanie’s sports car and the birds. Opting instead for ambiguity, wanting to leave the impression of unending terror, the film is unaccompanied by the traditional title card “THE END” suggesting that the lens of the camera has revealed an unassailable, universal truth which remains open-ended like an unfinished novel, the contours of the narrative (an observation commonly verified in both literature and practice) denies any easy moralizing despite our focus contemplation.

Also, adding to this chilly tone, Bernard Herrmann (PSYCHO) supervised the unconventional soundtrack of ominous trills electronically distilled and reiterated to simulate those eerie demons freighted with ill-will with no no music score, only chirping and squawking.

 THE CAMEO:  Alfred Hitchcock makes his traditional cameo appearance walking two Scottish Terriers (that he owned) out the pet shop as the character of Melanie Daniels enters.

THE POSTER: The original poster for the movie shows an “adapted” image of actress Jessica Tandy in the role of the mother, made to look like the son’s love interest, Melanie Daniels which critics and film historians have since paused to consider whether Hitchcock intended to explore the dark side of a parental embrace.

  THE PREMIERE: Hitchcock and Ms Hedren attended the 1963 prestigious invitational showing of THE BIRDS at the Cannes Film Festival.

 THE REVIEW: April 1, 1963 film critic Bosley Crowther imparted that the “threat of unspeakable horror is latent in our feathered friends! At least, that is what Alfred Hitchcock is implying in his new film, ‘The Birds’, which is whirring and screeching with deafening uproar…making a terrifying menace out of what is assumed to be one of nature’s most innocent creatures and one of man’s most melodious friends. Mr. Hitchcock and his associates have constructed a horror film that should raise the hackles of the most courageous and put goose-pimples on the toughest hide.

“Whether Mr. Hitchcock intended this picture of how a plague of birds almost ruins a peaceful community to be symbolic of how the world might be destroyed (or perilously menaced) by a sudden disorder of nature’ machinery is not apparent in the picture. Nor is it made readily clear whether he meant the birds to represent the classical Furies that were supposed to pursue the wicked on this earth. I prefer to suspect the latter, although it isn’t in Mr. Hitchcock’s style to inject allegorical meanings or social significance in his films. But the context of the birds concentrating their fury upon a house in which a possessive and jealous mother hovers anxiously over her son is so obvious and fascinating that I rather lean to it…and those birds! Well, you’ve never seen such actors! They are amazingly malevolent feathered friends.”

 THE ANALYSIS: The ironic enlightenment of the birds, according to the National Audubon Society, sends an urgent alarm concerning the overall health of our environment—the threats to our water supply, air quality, climate change and natural resources. But in a contest between man and fowl, in literature and practice, neither reason nor outcome is ever certain. However, as in the Hitchcock film—the birds win. And we can do nothing about it.

 THE AWARDS: The closing scene’s final image involves 32 different pieces of film, representing technical wizardry extraordinary for its day; a complex, trick composite shot using special visual effects with hundreds of birds—gulls, sparrows, ravens, and crows—all conflated with mechanical models and wispy animation. And nominated for an Academy Award, losing the Oscar to CLEOPATRA (1963).

Tippi Hedren received the Golden Globe for New Star of the Year—Actress in 1964. She also received the Photoplay Award as “Most Promising Newcomer”.

THE BIRDS ranked first on the top ten list of foreign films and honored by the Bengal Film Journalists’ Association Awards, naming Hitchcock as Best Director.

 THE DOLL: “This Barbie is for The Birds!” the ad copy reads, featuring the life-like heroine of Melanie Daniels under attack by a trio of feathered foes. But unlike those relentless creatures in the movie, these plastic creations will not damage her handbag, carefully coifed blond hair, or stylish green skirt-suit worn by the film’s heroine.

Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” Barbie® Doll from the Barbie Black Label Collection stands 11 ½-inches tall, includes fake birds, and celebrates the 45th anniversary of the acclaimed film. “Be sure to let Barbie into your home, and pray that the birds don’t come in with her!”

THE ESSAY: Camille Anna Paglia, dissident feminist and social critic, in 1998 published an evocative discussion analyzing Alfred Hickcock’s THE BIRDS for the British Film Institute’s Film Classics, featuring imaginative writing on the subject. Written as a single chapter, this paperback edition in the BFI literary series explores planning, production, and meaning of the film while developing thoughts to advance Paglia’s line of reasoning.

The author points to aesthetic, technical and mythical qualities in Hitchcock’s work in analyzing its depiction of gender and family relations, though focused here quite extensively on actress Tippi Hedren as the “icy blonde” in her first starring role. Paglia’s tour of the film narrative illumes her linear opinion that the character of Melanie Daniels is the cause for the birds’ fury, referring to the overly mischievous socialite as “a Daniels who enters the lion’s den.” The book is filled mostly with these sorts of abstract observations and personal asides. “In this film, as in so many others,” Paglia opines, “Hitchcock finds women captivating but dangerous….”

Deducing how the film portrayed anxiety, sexual power and the violence of nature, the author assayed the director’s work with scholarly qualitative analyses in concluding the film as “quintessential” Hitchcock amid a blend of autobiography, psychoanalysis and sexual kink.

 “Overwhelmed by the film when I saw it as an impressionable teenager,” Paglia observed with her inimicable female point-of-view, speaking for many of the film's original fans and soon-to-be feminist Baby Boomers. “I view it as a perverse ode to women’s sexual glamour, which Hitchcock shows in all its seductive phases, from brittle artifice to melting vulnerability.”

          STAGE ADAPTATION:  

“The Birds: A Tail of Ornithic Proportions” by playwright David Cerda and Pauline Pang is a ridiculously disturbing theater experience, a melodramatic parody and dark deconstruction of the classic film with further inspiration from the British Film Institute essay by Camille Paglia.

The play carries the audience behind the scenes and inside the mind of Tippi Hedren played by Tracy Repep—with Ms Hedren making an occasional cameo appearance, whenever her schedules permits, along with co-star Veronica Cartwright and other original cast members of Alfred Hitchcock’s groundbreaking horror/fantasy.

THE SEQUEL: Even if you admire the effort, at age 64 Tippi Hedren cast an eerie presence as a minor supporting player in THE BIRDS II: LAND’S END (1994). She gives an unwelcome nod to the Hitchcock film classic as the proprietress of a shop wasting time loitering in this overweening sequel that succeeds inviting comparison to the original. In her capacity as a shopkeeper, Ms Hedren submits her theories about why the birds have gone insane.

Following the premature death of their son, a biology teacher, working on a critical thesis, with his wife (their marriage a shipwreck) and two pre-teen daughters have moved into a summer house in a small New England fishing village, this benighted family spending a quiet season in the tiny seaside village of Land’s End, a small island just off the mainland.

Overcoming its lightweight subplot about adultery, the narrative turns on a shoal of birds that for no apparent reason start attacking the islanders. The town’s doctor, who’s also the mayor, is in denial about the spate of injuries until the birds—mostly seagulls with some ravens, crows and (this time) a hawk—increase the body count but without the queasy impact of the original.

This Showtime Channel presentation is mainly an excuse for grotesque high points when these demented creatures are blasted with shotguns and flares, producing animal carnage that the previous film had discreetly avoided; a TV-movie laboring toward its end with the elderly Hedren offering neither a cognitive reason for the bird attacks nor any rationale for a sequel.

THE DVD:

The Collector’s Edition given a current rating of  was issued in 2008 and (like the Barbie® Doll) in time for the 45th Anniversary of the film’s 1963 release with over 300 Amazon.com customer reviews. To paraphrase just a few of them: The transfer is immaculately sharp and clear, letterboxed at the 1.85:1 ratio used for theatrical exhibition, and the mono digital sound is clean and vibrant. The letterboxing actually gives the film more breathing room, and some of the sequences, especially the complex technical passages such as the attack on the school, and the spectacular attack on the town, have a visceral punch that’s ratcheted up by the clarity of the digital image and sound. Don’t be put off by the many sodium process shots that were necessitated by the demands of the screenplay; they are perfectly cut into the film, and give the movie a primitive realism that is perfectly in keeping with Hitchcock’s stylized view of reality. His films are all designed within an inch of their lives, and the audience is all the better for it.

The extras on this collector’s edition are quite valuable. A featurette entitled “All About The Birds” presents interviews with actors Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Veronica Cartwright, along with various technical personnel, and is lively and full of information about the film’s production. Also featured are Tippi’s screen test, production notes, a trailer, and web links. This is one package that beautifully showcases a film which gets better each time you see it.

This Collector’s Edition DVD includes the telling of Hitchcock’s original ending, an example of his story-boarding a scene.

THE REMAKE: Scared of the thought? One could remain safely confident that no matter how “cool” his movies might ever be, in Hitchcock’s lifetime none would beget a reboot or offspring appended with a roman numeral. However, giving fair hearing to a fresh inspiration, the desire for a do-over is not without merit and a chance to go back and undo some mistakes.

 

Toward this end, it must be said, Hitchcock is no stranger to rehabilitating a prior film; the Technicolor update of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1956) revamped his 1934 black & white original. He told filmmaker François Truffaut that he considered his remake superior, the earlier version “the work of a talented amateur.” The reboot resulted in many changes.

 

To leave well enough alone never an option with Hollywood looking for revenue from movies based on toys, sequels, board games, and superheroes, Universal has green-lighted Daphne du Maurier’s “The Birds” for a makeover with the benefit and curse of hindsight. If it flies or flops depends upon skillful storytelling, keen script editing, and the emotional acuity of the actors together with strong visuals and vivid action in addition to all those archetypal (if unnecessary) concessions to current genre conventions.

 

 Although 79-year-old Rod Taylor sounded skeptical about the Hitchcock film’s do-over, he seemed delighted by the prospect of George Clooney to take on the leading male role—and predicts he will do a better job than anyone else. “I often cringe when I hear mention of remakes,” Taylor groused. “But I’ll hold judgment, especially since I’ve been told Clooney’s the favorite.”

 “I think Hitch would call them tiny tots trying to make movies and ask why they don’t have an original thought in their heads,” Tippid Hedren commented. “Can’t we find new stories, new things to do? Must you be so insecure that you have to take a film that’s a classic and try to do it over?” The 79-year-old actress is outraged by the prospect of a revamp. “To challenge a monster of cinema like Hitchcock is such a very pompous thing to do. It’s appalling, I find it so offensive.” To be sure, this is not the same Tippi Hedren who showed no such reflection before participating in THE BIRDS II.

Michael Bay (director: TRANSFORMERS, 2007) as far back as 2005 said his company planned to revamp Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS.

Tub-thumping for a reboot in looking for a cash-cow, Universal Studios gleaned the notion as a quick and easy rehab of a dated film to grab at some fast cash; a “foolproof” tactical decision for studio executives with paramount commercial concerns, risk-adverse about new stories and concepts.

The scheme for a remake was on, then off, and now on again.

Along with producing partners Andrew Form and Brad Fuller (producers: FRIDAY THE 13TH, 2009) through their Platinum Dunes production house, Michael Bay specializes in remaking popular science-fiction, horror/fantasy, retaining the mandate and business model for making these movies inexpensively, using key players over and over, organizing specific genres, optimizing performances, and supervising a slate of developmental projects with resources spent exploiting name recognition of established brands (B-movies or film classics) or film franchises with those hard to the core fans in getting these flicks made quickly and cheaply. Predictably package routinely delivered, they assure the audience of their strong, mainstream horror standard.

However that may be the company’s work ethnic, revisiting the story of Du Maurier’s “The Birds” is shockingly off the mark for many devoted Hitchcock fans that immediately succeeded drowning the mere idea of a remake in a deep pool of protest beginning with that of Scarlett Johansson.

When reporters at a press junket in 2005 asked Michael Bay about plans to remake Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, the producer/director over-reacted in responding. "I don't want to talk about The Birds, because that's so far down the line, and I have misgivings about even trying to even do that, you know what I'm saying?"

Scarlett Johansson, also attending the conference to promote Bay’s latest film, THE ISLAND couldn't believe someone would even think about remaking a Hitchcock movie. "You're remaking The Birds? The one with Tippi Hedren?" she asked. 

Bay replied, "You can't believe everything you read. It doesn't mean it's going to happen."

When the director tried to change the subject, the actress again registered her protest, saying "You can't remake a Hitchcock movie!"

Again, Bay rejoined, "I know, it doesn't feel right. That's why you can't believe everything you read."

Michael Bay and his producing partners, now riding the knife’s edge in navigating development of what initially was intended a retread of the Hitchcock film, departed from their business model, committing to a more upscale and robust production while attracting a strong female lead and top-notch director—Bay’s directorial talents, basically workman-like if seldom more, has only gone beyond THE ISLAND and TRANSFORMERS in his work behind the camera on a 2009 sequel to the latter.

An upscale production draft of the script was now required. The writing team of Stiles White and Juliet Snowden (writers: BOOGEYMAN, 2005) and Leslie Dixon, veteran screenwriter of OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE, MRS. DOUBTFIRE, and THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR, and Scott Derrickson with Paul Harris Boardman (THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, 2008) all have had a hand in writing the screenplay thus far. The principal challenge here is the fact that U.S. movie-goers expect the narrative logic to be explained clearly, whereas European audiences see the film’s elements implicitly with little need to explain.

As the script continues to be emended for a credible plot and nuanced with subtext, Platinum Dunes’ inexpensive filmmaking production technique is being upended, endowed and buttressed by producers Peter Guber and Cathy Schulman of Mandalay Pictures (INTO THE BLUE, 2005; SLEEPY HOLLOW, 1999; DONNIE BRASCO, 1997) bringing much needed cachet to the proceedings—recalling how William Castle had gone from low-budget, exploitation moviemaker to producing ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968) with Roman Polanski in the director’s chair and Mia Farrow in the starring role. (Michael Bay and company had, in fact, planned a remake of this Polanski film but couldn’t come up with a fresh out-of-the-box idea.)

First scheduled to begin production in the fall of 2007, the project instead has been languishing in “development hell” as the writers continue working on the script and the producers cast about for committed actors and a director with marquee value.

NAOMI WATTS, reputed “Queen of the Remake” (THE RING, 2002; KING KONG, 2005; FUNNY GAMES, 2008) officially became attached to the project in October 2007. “I do feel slightly guilty about that,” she says. “But you know what? It’s perhaps because there’s such a lack of good ideas now.” Conceptually, Ms Watts wants to make the movie. The producers have her “provisionally” and now waiting for the script, having gone through an earlier draft that Ms Watts considered “good” but the screenplay remains a work-in-progress. Bottom line: She’s the actress the producers want, and this is a movie she wants to do.

After the project had gone cold in the Hollywood trade papers for quite a while, a star of the original film, Rod Taylor said that the filmmakers had been talking to him about casting GEORGE CLOONEY in the leading male role. A smart actor, one of only a very few working with the charm of “Old-styled Hollywood” with an Academy Award® in his trophy case, Clooney has gained a position of significance in The Industry, selectively cherry picking the movies in which he will become involved. A writer-producer-director in his own right, the actor is rumored to be associated with the remake if not yet formally attached to the production.

Martin Campbell (CASINO ROYALE, 2006) in negotiations to direct the reboot, producer Brad Fuller described him as “…the first true filmmaker who we’ve had an opportunity to sit down and really work with, a guy who knows what he’s talking about, is very passionate about the movie, has some fantastic ideas about what he wants that movie to be and with a guy like that, you just want to follow him up the mountain and do what he says.”

Currently directing development of the screenplay, Campbell will not be involved unless the film has enormous significance. “It’s a hard movie to make,” producer Andrew Form admits. “It’s a challenge and we’re not going to do it unless it’s great, and Martin’s not going to do it unless it’s great. We believe in Martin Campbell and his vision of the film.”

“Well, we’ve been having meetings with Martin,” Brad Fuller has gone on record saying. “We are inching closer. He’s in post on his (other) movie that he just directed so it’s taking a little bit longer because he’s in the middle of that. We’re getting closer on a script. I mean, that’s (the remake) a huge movie. That’s like all of our movies put into one so it’s a big undertaking and that’s why it’s taking so long.” The producer further stated, “We're working that out now but there's only so much that can happen. Birds attack. It's the explaining of why is it happening or if you explain why it's happening or who are the characters that it's happening to and the setting that it's happening in. Those are the things that we're contending with now. We're in the very early process on that, very early.”

TOUCHING THE UNTOUCHABLE:

So it is with terrible caution that those who are fanatical about Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS shriek at the mere mention of touching it with a “creative” hand; the concern of devoted fans (as well as Hitchcock aficionados) is not to let a modern-day re-imagining and tricks of Computer Graphic Imaging (CGI) with hyperbolic Dolby sound overpower human emotions that made the original so wonderful; keeping the intrigue and fear at the forefront without devolving into just another effects-driven scare-fest with the usual protracted action climax. But for today’s audiences, whatever drama to be found in a horror/fantasy film must be balanced with up-to-date filmmaking techniques to achieve at least some modest rewards at the box office.

Now, with all that said, if you’re still not interested in the do-over then don’t go see it. And if you do go, lower your expectations a bit, to better your chance of enjoying whatever it is and whatever it turns out to be.

 “For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.”

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By Frederick Louis Richardson

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Frederick@dreamerchant.com