Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ offers a warning for our times.
Ecological arguments in perfect focus on film’s 55th anniversary
“The Birds” was notable for its beautiful location work in Bodega Bay, the memorable bird special effects and actress Tippi Hedren’s imperishable green blazer and skirt — which withstood an escalating series of bird attacks, and still looked ready for a cocktail party.
Giant letters in the opening titles declared, “Miss Hedren’s costumes designed by Edith Head,” even before the film editor or cinematographer were credited.
Totally warranted. It was an amazing suit.
But that’s not what catches the eye 55 years after the release of the Alfred Hitchcock film, arguably the director’s final classic, and one of the great Bay Area-based movies. Passage of time has changed the film’s strengths, or perhaps more accurately eroded the intended message into starker relief.
“The Birds,” a horror film released in 1963, is the environmental movie that we need in 2018.
That isn’t a call for a remake, which is apparently in the works for television by the BBC. The Hitchcock version is perfect for modern audiences. It features a disarming slow build that ends not with a clear resolution, but
with a near-certain doom. The protagonists are numb, as a dwindling number of fools continue to doubt the inevitable ecological apocalypse.
That’s a long way from where the movie starts, with socialite Melanie (Hedren) and bachelor lawyer Mitch (Rod Taylor) in San Francisco, at a sprawling two-story pet store across the street from Union Square. (Possibly the future home of a Disney Store?)
They play pranks on each other and aren’t very likable, establishing “The Birds” as a romance that lacks sympathetic leads. Then the setting switches to Bodega Bay, and introduces more toxic figures — a widowed mother ( Jessica Tandy) who has an unhealthy fixation on her son, and a former girlfriend (Suzanne Pleshette) who claims to be “over” Mitch, but remains in a town she hates to keep him close.
That’s four people, chainsmoking through life, with no appreciation for the privilege that they’ve taken for granted. With the decisions that mankind is making, the movie seems to argue, you might as well turn the world over to the birds.
As the birds attack — a single gull strike quickly escalates to an exploding gas station — townspeople think that the saucy vibe of newcomer Melanie is somehow causing this pestilence. (“It seemed to swoop down at you ... deliberately!”) Why, they ask, would birds suddenly turn on man now?
“Birds have been on this planet ... for 140 million years,” says Mrs. Bundy, an old lady at a diner who has memorized an incredible number of bird statistics. “Doesn’t it seem odd that they would wait all that time to start a war against humanity?”
The latter argument probably sounded solid to an audience member in 1963, when people were still dumping paint thinner down their storm drains. The Environmental Protection Agency wouldn’t come around until 1970. The first time the words “climate change” appeared in The Chronicle in reference to a global threat arrived 11 years later, in 1974.
But anyone in 2018 watching “The Birds” understands the concept of tipping points, and the acceleration that comes with poor stewardship of the Earth. Maybe the birds were set off by a one-tenth-of-adegree change in the ocean’s waters. Maybe we cut down one too many trees.
This was surely Hitchcock’s intention, as proved by his own words. A sampling of reviews from the time shows that critics were far more interested in the (then) state-of-the-art effects and Hedren’s personal life. In a 1963 interview with The Chronicle, the director focused on the fragility of human existence.
“They are the revolt of Nature against Mankind,” Hitchcock told The Chronicle’s critic Paine Knickerbocker. “We take too many things for granted.”
Another sign that Hitchcock was sympathetic to the birds and frustrated with mankind: He oddly created the film with no music cues. The birds provide the only score, as if the extinction of mankind is happening behind the camera as well. Imagine the composer lying behind Hitchcock with his eyes pecked out as well.
Ornithology expert Mrs. Bundy is Hitchcock’s voice in the film, and she’s interrupted twice as she lays down the key soliloquy.
“Birds are not aggressive creatures, miss. They bring beauty into the world,” she tells the crowd in the diner, tuned out to her warning. “It is mankind rather who insists upon making it difficult for life to exist on this planet.”
Only when our heroes are knocked back to the Stone Age — no gas station, no power, faced with tearing apart their Union Square-bought furniture as fuel for the fireplace — do the birds finally let them pass unharmed.
“It appears that the bird attacks come in waves, with long intervals in between,” a voice on a car radio reports, explaining nothing. “The reason for this, does not appear clear as yet.”
Hitchcock fans know there was another planned ending, with the survivors driving past devastation, then seeing the Golden Gate Bridge covered in birds. But the ambiguous ending is better for the environmental message of 2018.
Bruised and beaten, our survivors drive away safely past fields of birds that are momentarily standing down, as their chirps and cries drown out the car’s motor. There’s no doubt that the two lead characters — whose first meeting is marked by their self-confidence — are at the mercy of nature.
Even Hedren’s indestructible suit is tattered now. Nothing is forever, “The Birds” tells us, if we keep our heads in the sand.