Movie Review: The Birds (1963)

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film The Birds is a natural horror-thriller film. Set in Northern California, the movie follows Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), a rich socialite, who decides to pull a prank on Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), whom she meets in a pet store. Melanie decides to follow Mitch to his home in Bodega Bay, with a gift of two love birds. The pair strike up a romance and things are great, until one day, when birds start attacking. Afterwards, the whole town becomes under attack from flocks of birds.

The birds are symbolic of both love and violence. The love birds in the cages are representative of the blossoming relationship between Mitch and Melanie, while the birds that attack in Bodega Bay are emblematic of humans taking nature for granted. Melanie’s decision to take the love birds across the river in such a discreet manner is suggestive of the idea that the birds have been taken advantage of for the sake of a relationship. The love birds are trapped inside a cage, and by way of retaliation, the birds in Bodega Bay ensure the humans are trapped inside, as they attack en masse on the outside.

Suspense is created through cross-cutting between the action and reaction. An example of this is when Melanie is waiting outside the school to pick up Cathy (Veronica Cartwright). We can see a jungle gym behind her as she is sat on the bench, which a few birds begin to descend upon, unbeknownst to her. The camera cuts between Melanie and the birds arriving at the structure. This slow pacing helps to build the suspense, along with the sound of the children singing ‘Risselty Rosselty’ inside the school. We then see a POV shot of Melanie looking at a bird making it way to the jungle gym and then a shot of her worried reaction. She stands up slowly and looks back in horror at a load of birds now gathered on the jungle gym. The audience see both the object of her gaze and her scared reaction.

The art of Hitchcock’s storytelling was his ability to tell a story visually, rather than through dialogue. Films such as Rear Window and Vertigo did this effectively. The Birds is another example of visual storytelling achieved through editing techniques. The audience is able to live vicariously through our protagonists by first seeing what she sees, by way of a POV shot, and then a reaction shot of what she sees.

The true horror in The Birds lies in the idea of the ‘what if?’ What if birds really did attack us? What if these innocent animals, that have lived among us for centuries, decided one day to turn on us? Have we for too long taken nature for granted? By the end, we do not really know what made the birds act in the way that they did, and that is perhaps the most eerie thing of all.