poliphilo | The Birds

It's the story of a quest. Only with gender reversal. A woman is the questor and a man the prize. To achieve the prize she must cross water, form an alliance with the dark girl who is Rose Red to her Rose White and defeat the gorgon mother who has turned earlier suitors to stone. The birds are the creatures of the wounded mother's fear and rage.

Is that what Hitchcock really intended? Did he know he was filling his film with archetypes? Hard to say. My guess is he didn't want to know. Better to let the unconscious do its work unquestioned- you get better results that way. An opening that is pure romantic comedy- with the stars doing passable imitations of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly- only gradually slopes to nightmare. On the surface The Birds is a straighforward disaster movie- in the genre of Jaws or Attack of the Killer Bees- and its success on this level- as light entertainment- disguises its other identity as mythic dream- perverse, fetishistic, uncanny- containing some of the strangest images ever committed to film.

But what does the ending mean? The heroine, bloodied in her quest, her head bandaged, her mind unhinged, is helped out to the car by mother and son. She squeezes the mother's arm. The pressure is returned. So who exactly has won? The car moves off down a winding road through a moonlit landscape covered in birds, birds, birds, as far as the eye can see...

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a short story by Daphne de Maurier. AS I remember, Sir Alfred took a few (many!) liberties with the story when turning it into a screenplay.

Well that's standard practise, isn't it. What works on the page doesn't necessarily work on film.

Hitch took enormous liberties with the Thirty Nine Steps too and I believe John Buchan had the grace to admit that the film version was an improvement.

Did he, really?

Has more than one film been made? The only one I know is the rubbishy one that has a woman joining Hannay in his flight across the moors. I didn't go to see it.

I know of three versions.

The first is Hitchcock's (1935)- which does indeed have Hannay on the run handcuffed to a reluctant woman. The stars are Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll. I guess if you love the original you'll hate it, but it's a very fine movie.

The second (1959) is a a virtual remake of the Hitchcock version- and stars Kenneth More.

The third (1978)- which I haven't seen- has Robert Powell as Hannay. I believe it ends with the cast climbing all over the face of Big Ben. Powell went on to play Hannay in a not very good TV series.

Growl to 2 and 3.
Well, all right, if 1 is a good film, but why call it Thirty NIne Steps?

To cash in on the success of the book?

Well, it does use the basic idea of an innocent man on the run in the Scottish Highlands. Film makers almost always take liberties with books. That's how it goes. And if we don't know the book we don't care. Speaking as one who loves Hitchcock and admires Buchan, I'd say honours were even between them. Hitchcock doesn't capture the feel of the Highlands the way Buchan does- and since he's largely filming in the studio he doesn't try- but his version improves on the plot and the interplay between Donat and Carroll is great fun (and very daring for its time). Both book and the film are ground-breaking in their rather different ways.

From what I recall, the only similarity between the story and the film is that both involved birds attacking people.

I've always likened The Birds to Suddenly, Last Summer. (The play version of the latter much more than the film.) The truth is more surreal and horrible than the surface appearance, and it all has strong echoes of the weird nightmare half-worlds of Cornell Woolrich.

The Birds is dark- and the more you examine it the darker it gets.

I'm also reminded of Bunuel. If he'd gone to Hollywood instead of France The Birds is just the sort of film he might have made. I believe he and Hitch admired one another's work- and of course, they both worked with Salvador Dali.

and its success on this level- as light entertainment- disguises its other identity as mythic dream- perverse, fetishistic, uncanny- containing some of the strangest images ever committed to film.

This entirely inclines me to see it.

I saw it as a kid and wasn't that impressed. I thought it was slow and dull- apart from the action sequences. The fact that I saw it in a school hall and the speakers were lousy and I couldn't hear most of the dialogue didn't help.

As a result I've always thought of it as belonging to Hitch's dotage. Not any more. Now I think it's brilliant.

The horrow of 'other', of the Maternal, the Montrous feminine...pointing out that even good girls end up/revert back to their natural state of 'other', the monstrous, the man eating female...

they are like the birds, although pretty to look at they eventually will return to the devourours and killers that they instintivley/really

you can't ever trust a woman...she'll peck you to death and eat you all up!! lol

or something like that... I'll have to have look back at some of the essays I have on it..

sorry did a Ross there,... should be 'horror'

You see I read it as a feminist hero-quest or something.

I think the point is it's mythical. And myth doesn't have a fixed meaning. You look in the mirror and see what you see. Part of the greatness of the film is it doesn't explain itself.

But if it's about women devouring men how come most of the victims are female?

Very interesting commentary--now I'm tempted to rewatch the film. I can't say that my first viewing was a positive one. I also can't help being wary of discussing films and characters in mythic terms, because a lot of the time it's because the characters are too dull to discuss as individuals, and the narrative is too boring for allegory, even if the visuals sizzle. I don't have much interest in seeing characters who stand in for archetypes because they can't stand up as themselves. And my memory of the Birds is that its leads were dull actors having equally dull interactions with other humans. It's only the birds who have any life. I sometimes think that the film would have been better off if it had no central characters at all, but instead, somewhat like Eisenstein's October, had tried capturing a swathe of humanity in crisis. I have to also admit that I think Hitchcock has gone from being underrated to overrated.

You've got a point about the actors. I kept thinking how much more entertaining it would have been if the leads had been played by Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.

But in my reading the most important character is the mother- played by Jessica Tandy- and she's frighteningly good.

Over-rated? Perhaps. I understand he's very fashionable right now in academe and the film schools.

The Birds

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