Friday Film: Blondes, Birds, and Bodega Bay
A review of Hitchcock's avian adventure
At the top of every month, a plucky PR girl from Harper Perennial emails me a list of upcoming titles from which to choose the ones I’d like to review. TBH, I mostly got into it for the free books. It’s a “side hustle” (hate that term) I struggle with more than anticipated because sometimes I really, really don’t care for the books, but as a writer, I feel terrible putting that on a page where the author might read it and have their feelings hurt. So, I didn’t choose any this month, and Alfred Hitchcock died before I was born. AND it’s Halloween season, so instead I’m going to review his 1963 classic chiller, The Birds, streaming now on Peacock.
I don’t want to bombard casual readers with more than one post a week, so all subsequent Friday posts can be just for the Bacon Bros, aka both Kevin Bacon’s band and this newsletter’s paid subscribers.
This “natural horror-thriller film” (a cute sub-genre Wikapedia just informed me of) was loosely based a short story by Daphne du Maurier, the same Lit Brit (a cute term I just made up) who wrote the base text for Hitchcock’s “Rebecca,” and many other noir novels.
The film opens in a pre-tech boom San Fransisco, with nary a needle in sight. Melanie Griffith’s mom Tippi Heden plays Melanie Daniels, a saucy socialite with nothing better to do than loiter at a bird store (you know, a bird store, like big cities have all over), and plan elaborate pranks. Daddy owns a newspaper, though our male lead, Mitch, explains later to his mother, he’s just a “part-owner'“ (burn).
Enter Rod Taylor, the hunky lawyer who shops for lovebirds in between court appearances. They’re not for him, mind you, their for his inexplicably eleven-year-old little sister, Cathy. Mitch appears to be about 40, though if Mad Men taught us anything aside from how to pitch Lucky Strike, it’s that in the ‘60s, anyone over 20 looked between 40 and 200. A diet of steak, Manhattans, Bohemian mistresses, Lucky Strikes, and zero exercise will do that to you. Their mother, Lydia, who we meet later in Bodega Bay, looks about 65 but could also be 34. Anyway —
Melanie tries to pull one over on our buddy Mitch by pretending she works in the bird store, but he’s not falling for it. Irked, she gets the bright idea to:
buy lovebirds
call Daddy’s partial paper to find out Mitch’s name and address
go to his apartment, where a neighbor tells her Mitch is at his weekend spot in Sonoma a.k.a Bodega Bay
drive two hours up the coast in a convertible
ask a bodega owner where Mitch lives and how to get there under a cloak of secrecy
drive to Mitch’s ex-girlfriend’s house, Annie the school teacher, to confirm his little sister’s name
rent a boat and cut across the bay to his home
break into said home, and plant the birds IN THE LIVING ROOM
sneak out and hide in the boat to watch his reaction.
If I — or anyone, I hope— did even two of these today, we’d be arrested. Mitch invites her to dinner. They should put this on the bottle of blonde dye she used.
Mid-prank/stalking, a whack seagull makes a nosedive for her in her dingy, which sets off a string of increasingly violent attacks by birds of all feathers on the good people of Bodega Bay.
The bird feed salesman gets his eyes pecked out (graphic), and a flock of sparrows break into Mitch’s house —which is actually his parents’ house, making him just a part-owner— via the chimney cute, which is even scarier than how Melanie got there!
Also terrifying, 11-year-old Cathy dresses like a child, a jarring contrast to 11-year-olds of today who dress and act like they are 30. Or maybe I’ve just been in New York for too long.
More chilling than every single avian outburst is the reveal that Annie first came to B.B. after Mitch picked her up in S.F. too. His mother Lydia (who is clearly obsessed with him, though now that I have a son, I feel you, L) didn’t go for Annie, so that ended — BUT ANNIE MOVED TO BODEGA BAY ANYWAY TO BE CLOSER TO HIM AND BE HIS SISTER’S SCHOOL TEACHER. Y-I-K-E-S.
Mitch. Buddy. Change your cologne or something, it works too well (good AXE Halloween campaign premise? Eh, Don?) These chicks are obsessed with you!
A masterpiece in both suspense and disaster filmmaking that deprives audiences of any comforting explanation or resolution to great effect. In fact, The Birds barely has an ending. The movie just… stops. For this, it is incredible. — film critic James Grebey,
We don’t know why the attacks begin, and we don’t know why they stop shortly after pecking poor Melanie within in inch of her life— and ruining her manicure. The film ends with the family driving off to find a hospital for poor Melanie who Mitch has wrapped up in a hilarious mumps-gauze-mummy costume. All that’s missing is a thermometer jutting out of her mouth.
So what does it all mean? Here are some theories I found:
Birds represent the threat of Communism which turns “normal birds like you’d see everyday” into Boris and Natasha-type villains.
“Birds,” a term for “women” represent the jealous females (Lizzie and Lydia), and the main attacks coincide with Melanie’s threat to their proximity to Mitch Almighty (first in Melanie’s boat, then when she sleeps over, and finally when she decides to stay in Bodega Bay). This theory suggests that only after she sacrifices herself to them do they stop.
Post WW2 anxiety about the government’s failure to keep it’s citizen safe (the radio says the military might try to help after Bodega Bay is already a heap of smoldering bird droppings).
In the first scene, Mitch says he wants lovebirds that “aren’t too demonstrative,” but “not too docile either.” A.K.A. Melanie is too uppity and Lizzie is too much of a human puddle. (Don’t these ladies have The Rules?)
Animals rise up because humans mistreat the planet, and they won’t stand for it anymore. (Eh.)
Personally, I don’t think the birds represent anything. Hitchcock was the master of suspense, not metaphors. Yes, possessive females abound, but I think Lizzie and Lydia serve to foreshadow that supposedly innocuous everyday, domesticated creatures (a mom, a schoolteacher, a parakeet), can really come for you if you don’t watch your back. To allow myself one metaphor, crows actually hold grudges and stalk those that scorned them, and who is lurking outside the school house of Lizzie’s, the ex who just won’t quit? Crows, that’s who.
Over all I found the movie creepy, scary, and fun to watch, though the little sister was annoying, the diner scene lagged, and by modern standards it was gratuitous how consistently the hysterical woman all needed Mitch to save them. I’ve linked below to further reading, including a dive into the many ways Hitchcock tormented Tippi during the shoot, including tricking her into being attacked by live birds sewn to her clothing, and the crazy lengths to which production had to go to make the special effects. Michael Bay would never!
Rating: 🥓🥓🥓🥓1/2