Hitchcock: The Birds

Plot

The Birds follows a wealthy San Francisco socialite (Tippi Hendren) pursue a potential boyfriend (Mitch Brenner) to a small Northern California town called Bodega Bay. We are mislead to believe that the film will be a romance however things slowly take a turn for the worse when numerous species of bird suddenly begin to increasingly terrorise and attack the small coastal town.

Trailer:                                                                                                                                         Stars:

Rod Taylor as Mitch Brenner

Tippi Hedren as Melanie Daniels

A thriller typically consists of a resourceful hero, a better equipped villain, a MacGuffin and a red herring. Immediately, the trailer exhibits most of these qualities alongside several of the best action shots, including the phone booth scene and the classroom scene, which successfully intrigue and excite the audience. Although the hero is very often a male, Tippi Hendren is the defiant heroine who rescues the children from the school when the villains (the birds) attack and returns home to Mitch to comfort his vulnerable mother and sister. The villains are the birds that come in many species in massive flocks; a symbol of nature fighting back against cruel humanity. Snakes on a Plane is an example of a film that uses nature, which are the snakes in this case, as the villain.

Red herring and the MacGuffin:

The opening scene misleads us to believe that the film will be a romance. Melanie is browsing for birds in a pet shop when she stumbles into a man called Mitch Brenner who mistakes her for a shop assistant. She continues to play the part and tries to sell him love birds. However, little does she know, Mitch is a lawyer and knows her from a recent case that she was involved with. As he leaves, she uses his number plate to track him down and tries to deliver the love birds to his apartment anonymously but her plan falls through when a neighbour tells her that Mitch spends weekends with family in Bodega Bay. In order to maintain her 'joke', she heads towards the coastal town of Bodega Day with the love birds. It is only at this point something quite peculiar occurs - Melanie is viciously bitten by a usually harmless seagull. This acts as foreshadowing to prepare us for action that will unravel later on in the film.

The MacGuffin is the love birds which act as the central focus in the opening but quickly decline in importance as the actual plot is introduced.

Bodega Bay:

Bodega Bay is a small, coastal town with little inhabitants created by Hitchcock. Very often in Hitchcock's films there is nowhere to hide as previously discovered in North by Northwest which creates a sense of inevitability- will the birds ever stop attacking?

Phone booth scene:

The phone booth scene is where Melanie seeks refuge and it enforces the idea of no escape. In this scene, Hitchcock has mainly used high angle and close up shots of her face expressing emotions of fear and helplessness to emphasise her vulnerability in comparison to the seemingly endless bird attack. The high-angle shots also make the space appear smaller which adds to the idea of no escape. Hitchcock also gets the audience involved in the action with point of view (POV) shots of the chaos happening outside to make us feel empathetic towards the victims in a way that Melanie does. The main POV shot which really engages us is when the birds begin to smash the glass in attempt to get Melanie; it leaves us on the edge of our seats while we wait for a dramatic climax. Nevertheless, to prevent the action from becoming too overwhelming, we are given some relief when Mitch rescues Melanie from the fragile phone booth back into the safety of the bar.

Crows on the Playground scene:

This scene acts as the onset of the birds' attack on the children of Bodega School as Melanie waits for Mitch's younger sister Cathy to finish school. Dramatic irony is used because we, the audience, are aware of the increase in birds while Melanie entirely oblivious to it. As she sits on the bench attempting to light a cigarette, her struggle increases the tension and could symbolise how this similar struggle will occur later when she attempts to save the children. The naive, innocent and safe sound of the children singing is ironic to the setting which makes the impending danger even worse. The song which builds up in length reflects the increase in the amount of birds and consequently, the tension and suspense grows in significance. Each time the flock of crows increase at the playground, Hitchcock goes from a medium shot to an extreme close-up shot of Melanie to represent to increasing danger. 

"The End"

Hitchcock did not use the conventional, "The End', as the film came to a close. Instead he left the conclusion down to interpretation with the dramatic climax of the threat- the birds.