Inspired by the Neuroscience Retreat held out at Bodega Bay, Jenny decided to present none other than Alfred Hitchcock‘s 1963 classic The Birds, famously set and shot primarily in Bodega Bay. Somewhat surprisingly, this is actually the first Hitchcock film shown outside of the marathon almost 9 years ago.
Before the film, Jenny picked out the topical For The Birds, a 2000 Pixar short featuring some bully birds facing some obvious consequences, as you can see below:
The feature film also starred a goodly number of bully birds, but the consequences were a bit less consistently applied, I guess you could say.
What? You LOOK like a coalminer!
The film begins with Melanie Daniels, the socialite daughter of a newspaper publisher, a customer in a San Francisco pet shop, pretending to be an employee in order to put one over on fellow customer and defense attorney Mitch Brenner. Unfortunately, he’s got Melanie sniffed out and he more or less turns the tables on her. Melanie is angry, but also very hot after Mitch, so when the shop is unable to provide the lovebirds he hopes to buy for his little sister’s 11th birthday, she takes it upon herself to find the lovebirds and deliver them personally to his weekend address in Bodega Bay, where his sister and overbearing mother live.
What do you mean, we’re outside the delivery area? There’s like 35 people in this town!
Saturday morning, Melanie, having learned Mitch’s address at the local bait and gossip shop is sent off to query Annie Hayworth, the local schoolteacher, about the name of Mitch’s sister. It’s for the card, see. Of course, it becomes pretty obvious that Annie was once a flame of Mitch’s, as we’ll learn later when Melanie boards with her for a night.
Fur is murder, lady!
In the meantime, Melanie rents a small boat to cross the bay to secretly leave the birds at Mitch’s house. She could have taken the road but figured that the boat would be more surreptitious. She’s right, but Mitch nearly catches her anyway and drives around to the piers where as she is pulling in, he witnesses a seagull attack her.
I should NEVER have let those 13 dwarves in…
Melanie accepts a dinner invitation from Mitch, and meets his overbearing mother Lydia, who disapproves of all of Mitch’s girlfriends (like, say, poor Annie Hayworth) because as a widower she can’t stand the idea of being left alone. Mitch’s sister Cathy, on the other hand, takes to Melanie immediately and asks that she stick around for her birthday party the next day. Melanie consents, but it’s at this point that things start going horribly wrong. First, the children are attacked by a large number of birds at the birthday party, followed by a pretty brutal invasion of sparrows from the chimney that evening which prevents Melanie from going back home to San Francisco despite the weekend being at an end.
Any men on my gym? None! Myna?
Nobody is the worse for wear, however, until the morning, when Lydia discovers a local farmer who has evidently been pecked to death in his home. She asks Melanie to pick Cathy up from school for her own peace of mind. But while Melanie is waiting at the schoolhouse…
Check me out, Kaw, I’m going to do a cherry drop!
…a murder of crows gathers, and Melanie, Annie and the children are forced to flee as the attacking birds have shown the ability to burst through windows – which the schoolhouse is generously provided with. The attack separates the group, and Melanie takes shelter in a restaurant.
They said NO TOPPING OFF!
From the restaurant, she and a fortuitously-found Mitch witness the birds attack a service station attendant, resulting in a massive gasoline spill that is comically ignited by a man with a cigarette.
Eventually, Melanie and Mitch find their way to Annie’s house, where they find Annie has been pecked to death as she ushered Cathy inside to safety. They flee with Cathy back to the family farmhouse, where they board up the windows and flue, trying to stay perfectly quiet as it has become apparent that the birds become violent around loud sounds.
If anybody else croaks “nevermore” I swear I am going to fly right off this set!
That night, hearing sounds from an upstairs bedroom, Melanie investigates only to be viciously attacked. Because she is in pretty bad shape, Mitch suggests that despite the situation, they must try to make their way to a hospital in San Francisco. The family tiptoes their way out to the car amidst a gigantic flock of birds and drives off into morning. The End.
So, the thing I really didn’t realize until the gas station explosion is that The Birds is really the very first version of…wait for it…Sharknado. No, really, I hate to say it, but it is. There’s no compelling plot, and the movie focuses on bizarre, unrealistic, and ultimately unexplained animal attacks. This is Sharknado, Hitchcock style.
The film does a pretty good job of building suspense – as you might imagine given its director – but for me there are a couple of ambiguities that don’t really work. The ending itself is one. I’m not typically turned off by an ambiguous ending, but for some reason this one bothered me. Do they live, do they die, do the birds stop attacking, does it just get worse, does it become a global phenomenon or does it peter out? Maybe I could stand the ambiguity a little better if there were any explanation of why the birds were attacking in the first place – but there isn’t. A woman goes to Bodega Bay, for no apparent reason birds start attacking everybody, oh crap people are dying, the end. It’s not very satisfying. I like to think that the bird attacks, which only begin once Melanie arrives in town, are actually a form of curse called down upon her (or any nuptial threat to her son) by Lydia – one she is subsequently unable to stave off no matter how much she might repent of it, but that’s probably just me being silly.
Cinema 1544: The As-Official-As-It-Gets Site 