The Birds: Why Do the Birds Attack?
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- Опубліковано 23 лис 2018
- One of cinema's great questions has never been answered: in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, why do the birds attack? Watch our take on the classic to find out. Support ScreenPrism on Patreon: www.patreon.com/user?u=7792695
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Are commenters not allowed to post external links to relevant information related to your videos? I notice my comment disappeared. I wasn't sure if it was because you felt my comment was too controversial, or because I had a few external links backing up what I was saying.
More Hitchcock!
Which one of narrates the videos? She has a beautifully sublime voice. It is wonderful to listen to the clarity and intelligence.
Factoid - there is no music score in this film at all.
I never noticed that, and I've seen the film a dozen times - thanks for pointing it out.
Oh wow I never noticed that
Yeah I watched it for the first time last night and noticed about half way through
That makes it more realistic
phototristan Does the scene with Melanie playing the piano count?
To date my favorite explanation for the birds’ attack came from a classmate’s essay that suggested that The Birds was secretly a romantic comedy and the birds were just trying to get Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren together.
Holy lol
By killing? Sounds like a black romantic comedy
Theres a doc on the making/development of The Birds that verifies your classmates thinking. Hitch and the screenwriter Evan Hunter wanted to develop it as a "screwball comedy that leads to terror" as a unique storytelling technique. I think many of the screwball comedy elements survived in the final product even though the film is more defined by the horror/terror elements.
I came here expecting an answer like "...in the end we don't know and that is the horror of it: Not knowing why" and I would have been totally satisfied with this. But this video is so much more interesting and showed me a point of view that I haven't thought of before. Thank you.
@WeAreTheDream .Indie
Why?
@WeAreTheDream .Indie i actually don't.
Who catches these small details? Honestly, I feel like a dumb guy who can't understand movies after watching this explanation...
Yea. Great read
I never ever connected the neighbour with his eyes pecked out to Oedipus. Amazing.
So, Michael has an Oedipus complex?
I think its the love birds, they're the cause and curse. Notice after Melanie delivers the love birds to mitch's house, a flock of seagulls start coming in front of the house. They hated seeing the love birds been captive in a cage and melaine holding them. Also notice mainly the seagulls were after her, less than the crows. Besides the crows were after the children and they murdered Annie. It was the birds' revenge on melanie and all of bodgea bay because they think that humans like melaine cage birds. Also definetyly notice why the birds killed that farmer Dan fawsett, because he has chickens and he kills, cooks and eats them.
I like this, I like this a lot
I agree
I really don't buy the 'how women destroy each other thing' with Annie dying. Annie is a little passive aggressive towards Melanie when she first meets her, but gives her a place to stay, helps Melanie understand the inevitable tension that will develop between her and Lydia by relating her own experience, and encourages Melanie to stay in Bodega Bay rather than scurry back to San Francisco if she wants to develop a relationship between her and Mitch. Annie is resigned to the fact that she and Mitch wouldn't have worked out anyway, and could have sabotaged the relationship by not saying anything or telling her to give up and go home. She's no female hostility between them and they have trust, Annie trusting Melanie when she warns her about the attack on the school.
I agree, I buy more into the idea that humanities sin against nature is what led the birds to do what they did.
lol before she explained her past, I was pretty sure Annie was gay and wanted to sleep with Melanie
Annie's death was a symbolic suicide. She felt she had lost Mitch to Melanie and had "given up" and sacrificed herself to the birds.
@@jaylbee1099 SAME. Big time gay vibes!! I read the "passive aggressive" attitude more as some cool and flirty thing she was trying to do lol
I really liked how they both clearly wanted to get past the competition nonsense and become friends.
I did not realize The Birds was a story by Daphne Du Maurier, the author of Rebecca. Another dark gripping novel with a strong female theme that was made into a fabulous film.
She also wrote the classic "Don't Look Now" .
I'm named Melanie because my family loved this movie so much. I appreciate these interpretations, I always just took it as a horror/mystery.
:))))
@Melanie Mota: 🐤🐦🕊️🦅🦆are you sure that birds are not following you..?? 🤔 😉
@@beingnavn5532 Not often! But I do get a little scared of guls while at the beach 🤣
@@melaniemota8683 Be Safe.. 😁
@@awesomeone2979 And I was named Jarjar... guess why.
This is a thorough and fascinating analysis. When I first became acquainted with the film as a kid, my interpretation was that it was all about birds in general taking vengeance for their cruel treatment by humans, which the old lady in the cafe describes in detail, and which the caged lovebirds represent. This was a frequent theme of horror movies in the 50s and 60s. But there is clearly a lot more going on than just that!
Hitch was abusive to women, so it makes sense. Ever see _Marnie_ - another movie where Tippi Hedron goes from having personal agency to being a cowering catatonic. There are interviews online where Tippi recounts how he harassed her. When she finally stood up to him, he blacklisted her.
In this film, Tippi was known for being terrified of birds. Alfred Hitchcock specifically wanted her to play the role, she yes since he promised she wouldn't be in presence of live birds and be using fake birds...yeah he was fibbing. This led to her to a week's bedrest because live birds were thrown at her at one point. Hitchcock was a brilliant film director but he was a complete nutter.
Agreed. As much of a genius as he was I won't discredit him. But yes he did have a way about him. He didn't think about using Marilyn Monroe in his movies because he labelled her "not serious" even though her superb performances in Don't Bother To Knock and The Misfits prove different.
@@p994able He was a sadist who enjoyed torturing women, that's a bit more than just "having a way about him." He was mentally unstable, but as a white male he was, of course, dubbed "genius" and could do whatever the fuck he wanted. Vertigo is amazing though, damn.
@@Blazenix1 actually not unusual in common male attitude to women
@@ninninin656 a white older wealthy male
The main thing I get from this whole thing is how good of an actress Veronica Cartwright is. Even as a kid She blew them all away. Underrated or what!!!
Is it me, though, or does she dissolve into tears in literally every movie she's been in? The Crying Hour, The Birds, Alien, Invasion of the Body Snatchers - It's like directors say "I need a woman to stand around helplessly and whine-cry in a few scenes" and the producer says "Fine! Somebody get me Veronica Cartwright's agent on the phone!"
@@JoeOConnellAllNew I've always said the same thing about her😀She's good at crying
Talk about being in some iconic horror classics, including The X-Files series...
"In the end Annie is killed by the birds, symbolising how women destroy each other for men." Perhaps, but that's quite a leap, particularly given how Annie and Melanie had resolved their initial rivalry and already become rather friendly by that point. Nonetheless, a nice vid, good work.
There was always subtle shade coming from Annie tho
Or Annie is still in love with Mitch, so she'd rather stay in the loop of everything that's going on in his life, that's why she "resolved" it, she lives alone, probably didn't want to live alone anymore, especially not without Mitch, so she "sacrificed" herself for Mitch, well Mitch's sister ...still destructive in nature...
i also think she perhaps died to show that melanie had won mitch over. annie always wanted to be a part of mitch’s life and subtly still wanted to be more than friends with him. however when we got more into the movie we see how mitch clearly has a desire for melanie over annie and she sees that too. therefore her death could highlight how she lost and was unsuccessful to win mitch over. just my interpretation.
I noticed that women a lot of the time become friends who have been with the same men, they team up and gang up on the guy because they can relate
But it was all fake, their relationship
One of the more interesting moments is when Mrs. Bundy is explaining to Melanie how it's mankind that's more dangerous but is interrupted by an order of fried chicken. Hitchcock was so smart.
The first time I watched this movie I thought it wasn’t scary, then I got nightmares. Weirdest thing that ever happened to me.
Great analysis! Hitchcock had said an explanation of the attack would have been science fiction and lessened the suspense!
well done. 'The Birds' is one of my favorite movies of all time.👍 I've watched this film so many times it's ridiculous.😏
I've always wondered what the birds symbolizes but haven't heard an interpretation like this. Great video once again.
In the words of Hitchcock himself, "It's only a movie."
This basically blew my mind. Great analysis!
One of my theories, is that its simply bad chicken feed... in one scene from earlier on in the film, you hear one of the main characters talk about their chickens are ethier sick or are found dead... if you put it all together the birds eat the bad feed and get some sort of new strain of rabies or something...
@@Eldrygg I don't believe so but its possible
Thought provoking and some quite compelling theories. I have always wondered why the birds attacked and found the film that much more enjoyable because there is always that act of trying to decipher the deeper meaning whilst appreciating the more practical buildup of tension. Maybe there isn't an answer and Hitchcock simply wanted the audience to actively invest - he was a great believer in showing not telling and even then preferring just to give visual hints; understanding that we naturally and enjoyably fill in the gaps and find explanations when asked to. So different from todays 150 minutes of exposition disguised as film-making.
Anyone remember that Arthur episode 'The Squirrels'?
Josh Rivera bout to look it up!
I just watched it! 😂 That was Great! Thanks! 😃
i was just thinking that...
Josh Rivera yes!!!!!
Do you know what's worst than being attacked by the bird?
Seeing an upcoming Will Smith movie about a secret agent turned into a pigeon (feat. Tom Holland as the owner). It's called *_Spies In Disguise_* .
God Lord, I thought you were joking!
You know what wores no Wi-Fi
I liked that authoritative little old lady in the cafe in the business suit with all the information about birds. And Suzanne Pleshette was even hotter than Tippi, but I'm partial to brunettes.
She had gorgeous eyes
"Nature getting revenge" who is re-watching this video during COVID-19?
Just watched it for the first time tonight and immediately thought of Covid...
@@RandomStuff991 what covid has to do with nature revenge?
What might have been interesting is to highlight what Hitchcock changed from the original story and what they might have said about the message Hitchcock wanted to send.
the birds are a metaphor for rage; it's about the affair tippy's character is having.
Ladies, I love y’all. This channel is awesome.
It's based on a book from 10 years earlier than the film (and long before "birds" became popular as slang for women) and the book was about aeriel attacks on the British countryside seeming to come out of nowhere to a public who weren't being accurately informed about the real state of the war. It seems like there's a lot of effort going into editing, and a lot of coasting on everything else
This was one of my favorite movies growing up. Thank you for making this video!
Can you do this for 'Birdemic'?
Private Number that’s cruel and unusual punishment haha
Yeah, except that movie has a character literally explains why the birds are attacking and what the message of the movie is
Fascinating. I never noticed until now but Tippi Hedren and Jessica Tandy actually look alike in this move: their face structure, physical presence, and even hair styles. Esp. with that Oedipus theory. Also, did Tippi named her daughter Melanie Griffith after her character?
To answer your last question, no, Melanie was born before she did this movie.
My theory as to why the movie producers had the birds attack is that was the plot of the movie they were making.
Good explanation of the movie. I especially like the fact when you explained how the birds, that are nature, are getting revenge against people since people have caged them and since people have been very cruel to nature.
What a refreshing, thorough, and eloquent scholarly film analysis from all the major angles. I really loved it and, because of its excellence, I subscribed. I look forward to researching the archive and seeing new videos.
I remember when the Animaniacs parodied this film. They called it "The Boids" 🤣🤣😂
What an audacious and original reading of this film -- especially the first part. You really have my mind spinning anew about a film I first saw as a child. I applaud your insight and intelligence in this and your other videos.
I love this channel so much! It always causes me to think about films I already love in new ways, it's absolutely incredible!
this is just daily life in Australia
Just signed up for my first Patreon! These breakdowns are by far my favourite of UA-cam. So considered and well written. It's always so exciting when you release a new one! Can't wait for the next. :)
They are silly and make women out to be weak and catty
All these themes with the exception of a few, are garners from viewer projection and transference.
I loooooooooooooove it when you guys do films!!! Shows are so much harder to keep up with. More, please!!
I just thought it was because of those lovebirds not some sort of symbolism
I think this a neutral and brutal film. No score, but no clear antagonist or protagonist, no character is good or evil, but flawed and realistic. This movie is about the characters not the birds attacks.
This movie is wayyyyyyy ahead of its time . And the most underrated Hitchcock film of all time. It has so many layers, and a BRILLIANT script. This movie is a masterpiece.
I think you are missing an important point with The Birds, it's a film taken from a book and in the book the reason though hinted at, is never stated....so Hitchcock is somewhat constrained by this, unless he wants to completely start making things up and I would suggest he clearly didn't.
That being said, I do believe the book is better than the film, I don't consider The Birds to be his best work at all.
A more important "detail" is, that Hitchcock's film just found, thrillerwise, inspiration in that book. "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier (book) is a completely different story from "The Birds" by Hitchcock. It's not "taken from the book" at all ! The book is set in the context of end of war Nazi bombings on England Interchangebly switching the birds attacks, with the memories of the historical Blitz. And no caged loverbirds in the book :-) ...
In other words, it's not even possible to make up the opinion the book would be better than the film. (Or for that matter just as well the other way around.) Different is different.
The media productions that actually WERE based on the book, are several productions on radio & TV as listed on Wikipedia page (about the book) : (Quotation:)
The story has been dramatised for radio and TV on several occasions, including:
- Episode 838 of Lux Radio Theater on 20 July 1953 with Herbert Marshall
- Episode 217 of Escape on 10 July 1954 with Ben Wright and Virginia Gregg
- Episode 240 (final show in the series) of CBS-TV series Danger on 31 May 1955 with Michael Strong and Betty Lou Holland
- BBC Afternoon Theatre on 20 November 1974 with Howard Goorney, Chris Harris, and Elizabeth Boxer[2]
- A three part BBC Radio 4 Extra adaptation, read by Charlie Barnecut, first broadcast 23 April 2008[3]
- An adaptation by Melissa Murray, for BBC Radio 4's The Friday Play, first broadcast on 30 April 2010[4]
-----------------------------------------
Hitchcock's film is not one of them.
Hitchcock's film is just as different from du Maurier's book , as "Life of Brian" (Monty Pyton's) is different from the New testament (Bible) :-) :-) :-) ... exactly the same: the Monty Pyton's team found a ground of inspiration in the bible story... and that's it ! :-)
@@Wig4 xd
@@Pancrasio-it9qd lol
I rewatched the "ALL ABOUT THE BIRDS" documentary last night.
According to Peter Bogdonovich, Hitchcock said the film was about "the dangers of complacency. We all take things for granted, we all take
birds for granted, so what if they suddenly turned? This is what would happen!"
I literally just saw this movie for the first time yesterday haha perfect timing with the vids 😁👍🏻
love what you guys do. keep up the great content :)
Thank you for this video! I have been asking myself this question ever since I saw this movie when I was 8!!
Great analysis, very much enjoyed!
Great analysis as always!
My take, before watching your video: This is a movie where the neuroses of mothers and old women turn a romance into a horror movie. Lydia (the mother) is in love with her son and afraid of being abandoned by him. Consequently, she's jealous and suspicious about the latest woman who has come to steal his affection. Her jealousy and neuroses manifest themselves paranormally as bird attacks.
The key to the film is that we see early on that there's more to Melanie Daniels than the loose woman whom Lydia has read about in the gossip columns. We have the strong sense of a woman who wants to move past her wild youth, and become the altruistic society wife and mother she was born to be.
But we're a step ahead of Lydia. She sees Melanie as the woman she's read about in the newspapers running naked through the fountain in Italy. She says straight on that she doesn't know yet whether she likes Melanie or not. The bird attacks stop only when her feelings become clarified.
I think it's a happy ending, in a very twisted way. The truce at the ending means Melanie has passed Lydia's test. Mitch's real affection for Melanie comes forward. Lydia gets to care for Melanie unconditionally like a mother. The final night of bird attacks begin with the women sitting in different parts of the room, with Mitch away from Melanie, near Lydia. After the attacks, they leave the house all three arm in arm, as a family, trying to get the help Melanie needs. In a sense, Melanie has earned her place in the family (although on Lydia's terms). But the birds are still looming - waiting and wary.
So after watching, I see we think a whole lot alike. Ha ha.
Excellent work as always!
Excellent analysis. Worth watching !
I enjoyed the analysis. Well done!
Whoever the narrator is, you overthought this so damn hard it actually gave me some needed laughs. My god being single rocks
Geez, good god will it never stop?
Can you please analyse any classic anime?? Like cowboy bebop.
You missed another important aspect: Hitchcock was a devotee of Carl Jung. Suzanne Pleshette is the ideal self of Tippi Hedron, a teacher. Tippi Hedron mentions that she is supporting a Korean boy to be educated. Kathy is the same age when Tippi Hedron when her mother left and her unresolved mother issue. The mother represents what Tippi Hedron fears that she will become, helpless and alone. All three become intergrated at the end into one whole being. The birds are the result of lack of love. When the people bicker, the birds attack. When helping one another, they cease and it is a warning as to how thin the veneer of civilization actually is. Extinction or a new dark ages is possible because of our quarrels.
Hitchcock has to be one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.
AutoMATIC thumbs up & engagement for these ladies cuz I KNOW this content guna be QUALITY!!! That’s right! I barely started this vid but that’s how positive I am that this look into this Hitchcock classic is guna blow my mind!!! 🤯🤯🤯 I literally already LOVE it!!! Huge thanks to you both for deepening my understanding and appreciation for films I already adore!
Ps This was one of the first films I ever studied academically! So much wild imagery!!!
Look
birds aren't even real anyway
What ARE birds? We just don't know. (????)
Agreed.
There made up by the government
Very grate synopsis girls of your content thank you
Love this so much.
Love your channel!!! XO
Annie was just...there. to explain lydia & mitch's relationship but lydia tells us everything we need to know, after her husband dies and the birds, she can't be survive alone.
Annie isn't hostile or passive aggressive or anything. Lydia acts suspicious but she's harmless.
One of my favorite lines in the movie is when the ornithologist proclaims that birds bring beauty into the world, it is man who cor- and is interrupted by the waitress ordering the cook to make three fried chickens. I like the allegorical reading of the movie, but the apocalyptic revenge reading also is fun with lines like these
Wow I wasn't expecting that . Nature is wonderful and scary. I remember eating chips outside and my word I thought I was in the film. That's because we are ruining everything snd seagulls are hungry you can't blame them🐓🐔🐣🐤🐦
YAAAS! Great analysis! 🤗
I always thought this movie was unusually devoid of meaning. Glad I was wrong and I learned this new perspective!
Great video! Congrats!!!!!!!
one of my favorite movies
Came here for answers and left with more questions. Great work
great analysis
I just realized Lydia is Jessica Tandy. Dang, she was gorgeous.
Hitchcock was a major genius.
This channel is great!
Beautiful explanation.
I notice in the film when Melanie decides to pursue Mitch, and she runs downstairs to get his license plate numbers, the Birds in the pet shop go nuts!
Debra and Susannah: Interesting analyse of the Birds. I never looked at it that way. But i have a question: Do you have references or commentaries from Hitchcock, the author of the original book or anyone else that has studied this movie to support your comments?
Great analysis! Though personally I think it’s much more scarier if we don’t know why they are attacking.
Wow. Taking an interesting subject and making it even more so.
Thank you for this video. It was really interesting and makes me even want to watch the movie. I always put this in the "I'll just watch later" list before but it seems more interesting now😊 Um, would you do an examination of The John Wick movies and its title character's devolution/ suffering in grief and how that colors his actions in the movies? Like how he struggles for the normalcy he promised with his wife while also lashing out at the world for his loss and more?
Love this deep explanations
Very interesting.i need to watch this now
Just imagine if Leigh Whannell adapted the novel like he did with The Invisible Man.
Awesome analysis
I saw an interview one time that stated that mechanical birds were to be used in Melanie’s attack scene. However, as I heard it, when she turned down Alfred’s sexual advances he decided to use real birds in the scene instead as retaliation. Guess he was just like Weinstein and Bill Cosby; but who knows on what scale?!
Any actress who worked with him knows. He was notorious for telling his lead actresses dirty jokes just before a difficult scene to "relax them."
watched the movie long ago and not really impressed by it. so everything you said in this video is new to me, i never thought of it. guess i really need to watch it again.
Maybe the birds didn’t want the 2love birds there! OR, Melanie!
I need to watch this again; last time i was too young to see anything but the birds. The skinny ties of the time were super cool.
Insightful
Curious how nobody talks about the book the movie is based on xD
This seems rather spurious: Mrs Bundy (the ornithologist in the 1963 film) explains what's actually happening.
Surprisingly enough, Ingmar Bergman was a great fan of Hitchcock and his visual storytelling. He borrowed the basic situation for his film The Passion of Anna with a mysterious maniac mutilating animals. Bergman's Faro Island is quite evocative of Bodega Bay.
Super information thank you,
I'm from India, Bangalore
I always wondered what this movie was about..I could never define it. Thanks for the interpretations.
There were many other questions left unanswered in this film:
01. Why did the birds attack on paroxysms (bouts)?
The hypothalamus is the area of the brain that drives periodic, circadian behaviors and rhythms. Most of the time, there are environmental (light; seasonal/weather changes), as well as intrinsic (hormonal derangements; electrolytic disorders) triggers. A clear-cut trigger failed to emerge, or be hinted at in the film (e.g. the birds would attack both, during daytime and nighttime).
02. What was the signaling involved to alert the birds to stop attacking, and disperse again?
Once again, we were left in the dark.
03. Were the birds bound to attack again?
The birds were quiescent while the family was heading to the hospital. Yet, the implication all along might have been that this was a shortlived hiatus, for they might be prone to attack again.
04. Why did it never cross anyone's mind to release the caged birds?
The attacks started right after Melanie brought the caged birds to town. (Melanie was, indeed, the very first person, and also, the last person to be attacked by the birds in the film.) At a critical juncture, with the town wrecked by the fear and chaos inflicted, setting the caged birds free would have seemed the logical, last-resort maneuver to avail oneself of, in a desperate attempt to curtail the attacks, and save the town's people.
> 04. < YES, I AGGREE ! But why does this NOT setting free, NOT happen in the film?
My analysis:
It seems to me, as the film ends with the car driving away to a non defined destination (then 'the end'), having on board the caged lovebirds, that this suggestion could really be THE thing in the thriller: "The caged birds" started everything, by their own tweets then and now. Check the scenes, most attacks happen just after the lovebirds started a tweet. So, inherently, the open ending of the film could include: the loverbirds are in the car, so, the car will be attacked to death of all 4, when the loverbirds start tweeting further down the road. No need to bring it on screen, we can feel this "must happen"... :-)
Even when 'The Take by Screenprism' invents such a big overly machinated symbolism around woman, I do not believe it's the view of Hitchcock. Not at all. It is a THRILLER. Suspense is found in in the piling up of details (as in any good thriller). Those loverbirds are the storyline's "evil", and by taking the evil back in the car, the worst is still to happen. WHAT has Hitchcock actually done here in his script ? He ommitted the Final of the End... :-) ... to give the guesswork to the spectators.
NO, 'The Take by Screenprism' , I'm not running along in that fake woman allegory story of yours. It's 21st century pseudo intellectualism. The relationships between men and woman in the film, actually are totally "standard 1950-ies" commonplaces. And Hitchcock just uses that as a smooth background, for his nerving thriller.
A thriller is a thriller.
Wig4 Agree.
It's been a while since I read the original story but I think the activity of the birds may have been connected with the tides. Also a while ago I've read about Daphne DuMaurier herself and my recollection is that there are several versions of how the story originated and I don't recall that she ever said what the story meant. The author may have just left it up to the reader. Since Alfred Hitchcock used only the premise of the story he may have implied meanings that Daphne DuMaurier didn't have in her short story---which is one of the most frightening things I've ever read!
One major detail this video misses is that Bodega Bay was the only town that was attacked continuously by the birds. Other neighboring towns experienced bird attacks too, but not to the same level as Bodega Bay. In fact, the scene where the characters are listening to a radio, they are told that the military has quarantined Bodega Bay specifically. I thought that maybe some illegal experiments were being conducted near the town, which led to the attacks. But the movie doesn’t go in that direction.
Good stuff