Were they Flying North or South?

“Don’t they ever stop migrating?” Suzanne Pleshette ponders with a weary detachment as she stares down at the broken neck of a gull that has just died from crashing into her front door. That happens early on in The Birds. It doesn’t really matter, of course, whether they were migrating in the spring or the fall, flying north or south, or whether they were migrating at all. The birds are hunting humans, and that’s that.

Surely you have winced and flinched your way through this nearly timeless Hitchcock classic. If so, it’s one of those movies that are immeasurable fun to revisit (especially during a migration season like we are in now). If you haven’t seen it….is that even possible? But, if you haven’t, I envy that first-time engagement that awaits you.

I say “nearly timeless,” but it would be more accurate to call the film both dated and timeless at once: Tippi Hedren does conspicuously wear a mink coat, which is definitely not in keeping with early 21st century sensibility. A man (Mitch Brenner played by Rod Taylor, so often not acknowledged for his fine organic acting) rather than a woman does most of the heavy lifting, and the movie has zero ethnic diversity. These are all dated elements, however, there have always been questions about ethics in the treatment of the natural world, and the fear of nature turning against humankind always exists.

There is one scene that makes this motion picture particularly delicious for Actors Under the Stars. To see the character actors who flock together in the restaurant scene – one of the movie’s centerpieces – is as delightful as opening a box of assorted chocolates.

The male half of the cafe owners is the almost-handsome Lonny Chapman, so recognizable yet so easily overlooked.

The rather adorable drunken prophet is Karl Swenson, a staple through several decades of television.

The female half of the cafe owners and main server is twinkling-eyed Elizabeth Wilson, not as recurrent as Swenson but, nevertheless, familiar from early TV.

Probably Broadway actress Ethel Griffies’ most memorable screen role is in this scene as the knowledgeable amateur ornithologist.

Charles McGraw, of many a film noir, is the weathered sea captain whose fishing boats have been troubled by gulls.

The scotch-drinking bird-hater is the crafted Joe Mantell, who never disappoints in any of his numerous roles.

Malcolm Atterbury who was, from 1954 to 1979 in…let’s just say…”everything,” is the town deputy.

And Doreen Lang is a hallmark in The Birds as the terrified, inept mother who gets slapped by Hedren.

Great stuff!

Backstories about The Birds abound. Just about everyone now knows that Tippi Hedren says Hitchcock made unwanted sexual advances upon her during the filming and that he was tyrannical to the point of deliberately sabotaging her career; yet she acknowledges how enchanting he was as an artist and a person. Film buffs marvel at explanations of the magic Hitch employed in his moviemaking, and there is speculation as to whether the film was inspired by a real-life event. It was — in part.

Based on a harrowing 1952 short story with the same title, the film prominently credits Daphne Du Maurier as the original source for Evan Hunter’s screenplay. Hitch undoubtably loved Du Maurier’s story because he reprinted it in his 1959 anthology, My Favorites in Suspense. According to Scripting Hitchcock by Pace University professors Walter Raubicheck and Walter Srebnick, it was the summer of 1961 when Hitchcock decided to adapt the story into a movie.

One day that summer, the town of Capitola, California was attacked by, reportedly, thousands of violent birds. This incident clearly inspired the director as he developed a film from the story that had captivated him, and he migrated the narrative from its original setting in Cornwall, England to the California coast.

Those birds were shearwaters. Both the short story and the film use the even more horrifying schematic that various, indiscriminate kinds of birds are striking simultaneously. (So much for birds of a feather.)

Radio has embraced the tale several times. Notably, one year after the Du Maurier fiction was published, Lux Radio Theater retold the tale in its original setting – during fall migration, by the way, so the birds were flying south. It shares many of the same elements with the print story and the movie. Radio, itself, plays a role in the film and a much larger role in the non-visual medium. Music intermittently swells.

And this brings us to one of the most brilliant aspects of this legendary motion picture: there is no music! Famed film composer Bernard Herrmann is billed as “sound consultant” while frantic birds jaggedly slash the words of the opening credits onto the screen, their piercing screeches being the only “music.” Later in the film, the stress-building, barely bearably repetitive “Risseldy Rosseldy” song is sung acapella by school children while they are unaware of the patient gathering of determined crows. That is the sole presence of music.

There is a delectable smattering of supporting character actors who are not in the restaurant scene, namely Richard Deacon, the droll man in the hallway; John McGovern, the postal clerk; Doodles Weaver as the fisherman who rents the boat to Melanie; and the rather remarkable, befuddled Ruth McDevitt, the bird shop owner in the opening scene. AutS takes no one for granted.

Get set for a good time.

~ FW