The Birds

[poliphilo]

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...

Comments

It was first...

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: It was first...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: It was first...

[richenda.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: It was first...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: It was first...

[richenda.livejournal.com]

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

Re: It was first...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: It was first...

[senordildo.livejournal.com]

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