The Birds Analysis

The Birds Analysis

 

Director:

Alfred Hitchcock

Writers:

Daphne Du Maurier (story), Evan Hunter (screenplay)

Stars:

Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren and Suzanne Pleshette

 

Plot:

•       A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people there in increasing numbers and with increasing viciousness

•       Often in Hitchcock there is nowhere to hide – eg Bodega Bay in “The Birds”

•       Dramatic irony – when audience know something individual characters do not. In the schoolyard scene Tippi Hendren does not know the birds have been gathering but the audience does. We have knowledge denied to the character.

•       In Schoolyard scene the underlying score of the innocent child’s song is in contrast to the evil in nature. Tippi Hendren’s character is only guilty of taking nature for granted.

•       In “The Birds” scene outside the café – the high camera angle is like the gaze of a pitiless buzzard who swoops down to attack another helpless bystander.

•       The MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin or Maguffin) is "a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction".

•       The defining aspect of a MacGuffin is that the major players in the story are (at least initially) willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to obtain it, regardless of what the MacGuffin actually is.

•       In fact, the specific nature of the MacGuffin may be ambiguous, undefined, generic, left open to interpretation or otherwise completely unimportant to the plot.

•        Common examples are money, victory, glory, survival, a source of power, or a potential threat, or it may simply be something entirely unexplained.

•       The MacGuffin is common in films, especially thrillers. Commonly, though not always, the MacGuffin is the central focus of the film in the first act, and then declines in importance as the struggles and motivations of characters play out.

•       It may come back into play at the climax of the story, but sometimes the MacGuffin is actually forgotten by the end of the film.

•        In TV interviews, Hitchcock defined a MacGuffin as the object around which the plot revolves, but, as to what that object specifically is, he declared, "the audience don't care"

•       The scene where Tippi Hedren is ravaged by birds near the end of the movie took a week to shoot. The birds were attached to her clothes by long nylon threads so they could not get away.

•       A number of endings were being considered for this film. One that was considered would have showed the Golden Gate Bridge completely covered by birds.

•       The film does not finish with the usual "THE END" title because Alfred Hitchcock wanted to give the impression of unending terror.

•       When audiences left the film's UK premiere at the Odeon, Leicester Square, London, they were greeted by the sound of screeching and flapping birds from loudspeakers hidden in the trees to scare them further.

•       There is no diegetic music for the film except for the sounds created on the mixtrautonium, an early electronic musical instrument, by Oskar Sala, and the children singing in the school.

•       Mankind has abused birds throughout history. Deliberate irony in the café scene with the elderly ‘bird loving’ lady. She is interrupted by an order for three southern fried chickens. In addition one of the other character’s initial reaction is to shoot the birds.

•       Hitchcock said that in “The Birds” the usual evasions (science/religion) are denied to us. We are on our own.