Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds

The Birds opened this semester’s presentation by Access Cinema in Hinesburg. Very challenging list of films on Ken Peck’s list. Engaging discussion after the movie. Sixteen signed up. Ken wants the entire auditorium filled. Audacious expectations. And, I don’t think watching a movie in such an overwhelming venue will be fun or enlightening if so many people are watching.

Peck says he runs these programs to keep the love of movies alive. I attended his Key Cinema for three years, before it folded. He allowed too many stupid questions, didn’t bring enough outside speakers, and was fed some stinkers from the Los Angeles based company that ran the series. I would have reupped, but it closed. At least I didn’t have to listen to the rear of the room’s idiotic comments.

When I first saw The Birds in 1963, I trembled. Damn. Remember the shower scene in Psycho? The trailer for this one is no less chilling. I saw it with my girlfriend, Ann. We clutched each other throughout the film.

Its filled screams and helplessness. While it starts off as a Doris Day/Rock Hudsom romantic comedy, it quickly becomes a scary movie. No music to set the moods. Only the electronic sounds of birds chirping and flapping, hitting glass, pecking on wood. Grounds are covered. Nowhere to step. Nowhere to run. They perch on electric lines, rooftops, and jungle jims.  Diminutive as they may be, they use their claws and beaks as weapons, indiscriminately. Where is the Hay’s Production Code to protect children from being pecked to death? What a way to die! Blood everywhere. Cannot shoot them or eradicate them. No way to reason with birds! And, what would you say to them? No one did anything to warrant their attacks, so you cannot even say how sorry you are. It cannot be the end of the world. You sort of know everyone won’t be killed, but you don’t know who will or how scarred those who remain will be. An inconclusive ending doesn’t help, either.

I know I followed the story in some fashion each time I saw it. But there’s the rub. When you see movies over and over, you get the sense, sometimes, that you don’t remember certain scenes. It has made me wonder at times if I am watching a movie that has added details, like when you see a director’s cut. Here, for example, I remember it in black and white, though I know it wasn’t, because Tippi Hedrin had blond hair.

I have seen this movie at least five times, the first time when I could not have paid a lot of attention to details and at a time when I didn’t know much about anything; once more in a theatre during a Hitch festival in NYC in seventies where there was a discussion; and three or more times on television where I didn’t pay attention to anything except the action. This last meetup was a close watch. I trembled again last evening, 47 years after my first viewing, even though I know what’s coming. The ending still disappoints. It still works and I understand it better.

What I missed, though maybe I just cannot remember because of my aging mind or my will to repress my past, is that the male lead, Mitch Brenner, is a criminal defense attorney. While I have to agree that nothing makes it into a Hitchcock movie without a reason, I am hard pressed to figure out how or why these two interchanges take place. Don’t have time to discuss them here, but I am thinking about it.

The first occurs early in the movie and gives the socialite a cute way to enter Mitch’s life by planting love birds in his house which she knows he wants to give to his sister for her birthday. During a chance meeting at the bird store, she makes believe she knows something about birds, playacting as the shopkeeper. He tells her that he had seen her in court for having engaged in some rich-girl-lindsay-lohan, type crime. They jibe at each other:

Melanie: So you’re a lawyer.
Mitch: That’s right. Of course I usually defend people, Miss Daniels, but if I were prosecuting…
Melanie: Do you practice here?
Mitch: (No) San Francisco….
Melanie: What kind of law?
Mitch: Criminal.
Melanie: (playfully and teasingly) Is that why you want to see everyone behind bars?
Mitch: Oh, not everyone, Miss Daniels.
Melanie: Only violators and practical jokers.

The second occurs at his house where his sister and Melanie chat, checking each other out. Hard to tell if Melanie relates to Cathy as a future kid sister-in-law or a future step-daughter. Cathy shows a little more poise than her 11 year old personna should have, too.

Cathy Brenner: [while Melanie is playing the piano] I still don’t understand how you knew I wanted lovebirds.
Melanie Daniels: Your brother told me.
Lydia Brenner: Then you knew Mitch in San Francisco. Is that right?
Melanie Daniels: No, not exactly.
[grabs a cigarette out of an ashtray]
Cathy Brenner: Mitch knows a lot of people in San Francisco. Of course, they’re mostly hoods.
Lydia Brenner: Cathy!
Cathy Brenner: Well, Mom, he’s the first to admit it. He spends half his day in the detention cells at the Hall of Justice.
Lydia Brenner: In a democracy, Cathy, everyone is entitled to a fair trial. Your brother’s practice…
Cathy Brenner: Aw, Mom, please. I know all that democracy jazz. They’re still hoods.
[Mitch comes in]
Cathy Brenner: He has a client now who shot his wife in the head six times. Six times! Can you imagine it? I mean, even twice would be overdoing it, don’t you think?
Melanie Daniels: [to Mitch] Why did he shoot her?
Mitch Brenner: He was watching a ball game on television.
Melanie Daniels: What?
Mitch Brenner: His wife changed the channel.

I need to think this over.

Author: duckshots

Lapsed lawyer. Reader. Photographer. Jewish. Strongly attached to loving, caring, wife-Sharon. Working at remaining relevant. Hoping that my body and mind outlive my dreams. Maybe something I blog will make some sense. View all posts by duckshots