The Birds
Shot-by-shot

Story
• Based (loosely) on a
Daphne Du Maurier short
story
• Adapted for the screen by
Evan Hunter (a.k.a. Ed
McBain)
• Hitchcock’s first film for
Universal Studios,
released 1963

• Tagline:
Suspense and
shock beyond
anything you
have seen or
imagined!

Cast
• Rod Taylor (Mitch
Brenner)
• Jessica Tandy (Lydia
Brenner)
• Suzanne Pleshette
(Annie Hayworth)
• Tippi Hedren (Melanie
Daniels)

Influence
• Introduced a whole new genre of film
based on “revenge of nature”, even
though this theme in the film is
debatable.
• No music score - electronic sounds
• Enigma code... unresolved

Special Effects
• The Birds employed innovative special
effects which involved compositing as
well as wire-work, mechanical and trained
birds.

Enigma Code
• In semiotics, an enigma code works by creating an
intriguing question in the minds of the audience.
• Trailers and posters often use enigma encoding to
tempt viewers.
• In the case of The Birds, Hitchcock plays with the
audience’s expectation that the question set up by the
enigma code will be answered

Psychological Readings
• The Birds includes a romantic love-
triangle, as well as a family psychodrama
(mothers and their sons...)
• These elements have prompted some
Freudian readings of the film, connecting
the bird attacks with the inner thoughts/
feelings of various characters

• “On an allegorical level, the birds in the film are
the physical embodiment and exteriorisation of
unleashed, disturbing, shattering forces that
threaten all of humanity (those threatened in the
film include schoolchildren, a defenseless farmer,
bystanders, a schoolteacher, etc.) when
relationships have become insubstantial,
unsupportive, or hurtful.” - Tim Dirks

• “Robin Wood's theory [is] that the birds
are a concrete reminder that life is
ultimately precarious, arbitrary and
absurd and quite possibly meaningless...
[T]he function of the birds is to remind us
that control is an illusion and people who
try to maintain that illusion are the ones
hardest hit by the unpredictabilities of
life.”

Hitchcock’s Blondes
• “You know why I
favour sophisticated
blondes in my
films? We're after
the drawing-room
type, the real ladies,
who become whores
once they're in the
bedroom.” -
Hitchcock

Why Blondes?
• Hitchcock believed that sex a a possibility
should be discovered
• He frequently represented cool blonde
women in extreme situations – so that
their passions could be aroused
• The Birds is particularly cruel to Tippi
Hedren’s spoiled socialite.

Other Readings
• Early interpretations of the film looked at
The Birds themselves, seeing them as
taking revenge for human mistreatment.
• More recent critics see the film as a
deliberate attempt to play with the idea of
meaning itself, to leave the audience
searching for meaning by deliberately
leaving loose ends all over the place.

Body Horror
• In common with many horror films, there is a
real focus on the eyes and blindness.
• Birds peck at eyes, and there are horrific images
of eyeless corpses.
• Again, attacking eyes can be seen as a
commentary on the voyeurism of the audience.

The Birds has an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 according to
the DVD packaging, or 1.37:1 according to IMDB.
Really, this is just a fancy way of expressing the
old standard TV ratio of 4:3!

The opening titles (by James S. Pollack) is a striking sequence
of black birds fluttering against a white background. The
pioneering electronic soundtrack was by Remi Gassmann and
Oskar Sala, with Bernard Herrmann acting as consultant.

Opening establishing shot shows Tippi Hedren crossing a
San Francisco street. Note the jokey inclusion of flight
advertisements for BOAC and Air France (and TWA, just out of
picture)!

Hedren looks back, distracted by bird sounds

BOAC, TWA, Air France... and birds

Hitchcock’s traditional appearance, as Hedren enters the
pet shop

Classic 180° rule. Note the matching eyelines.

The jokey tone of the opening continues with the love
birds leaning as the car takes a bend.

Back projection
• Also known as rear projection
• A filming technique in which the actors play out
the scene on a sound stage, in front of a screen,
onto which a background image is being projected.
Allowed actors to “act” without worrying about,
say, driving, and eliminated sound problems.
• The projected image is called a “plate” (as in, “Roll
plate”).
• Most frequently used for driving scenes.

Location scenes of an actual car on an actual road are cut
together with rear-projected close-up scenes of Hedren
driving the car on a sound stage.

Three angles of the boat crossing the Bay succeeded by a
studio-bound rear-projected shot. Back projection tends to
look somewhat dated these days. You can see that Tippi
Hedren is better lit than she might be on location.

Match-on-Action #1: From an exterior shot of Hedren
opening the door, to an interior shot of her coming
through the door. Though these scenes could well have
been filmed on different days, the illusion of continuity is
complete.

Match-on-action #2. From a medium long shot (MLS)
showing Hedren reaching into her bag, cut to Extreme
Close Up (ECU) insert showing envelopes being pulled
from bag.

Match-on-Action #3: Hedren lifts a curtain to look out of
the window. Cutaway to a POV shot showing Hedren’s
view of the barn.

It’s a tradition of cinema that the binocular shot shows
something like this: in reality you see a single circle
through properly aligned binoculars.

Melanie (Hedren) sees Mitch (Taylor) waiting for her, then
her smug composure is shattered by the first bird attack of
the film. ECU of her hand shows the bird has drawn blood.

1 2
3 4
Classic spatial continuity editing. Shot 1 shows us that
Mitch is on the left and his mother Lydia (Tandy) is on the
right. Axial cuts take us closer to the pair in shots 2 and 3
(note that each remains oriented on the correct side of the
screen). Shot 4 shows Melanie’s eyeline match with Lydia in
this tense and suspicious first encounter.

A subsequent shot places Lydia in the centre of the screen,
while an axial cut brings us closer to Melanie. This makes
the unspoken emotional tension between these two women
“central” to the unfolding story. (Lydia is protective of Mitch
— like a mother bird protecting an egg!)

The “birds”. Being British, of course, Hitchcock couldn’t
fail to make jokey reference to the British slang term.

The long take. They enter the house for the dinner. In the
background, Mitch takes Melanie’s coat and fixes some
drinks, while Lydia phones her chicken feed supplier.
The whole scene lasts 2 minutes without a cut (from
00:32:16 to 00:34:16). We hear just one side of the phone
conversation, which adds to the realism of the scene.

Mitch goads Melanie into losing her cool as she prepares
to leave. 180° rule and eyeline-matching applied here,
followed by axial cut from MCU to CU as argument
intensifies.

Hitchcock plays with meaning and our need to interpret. After
the intense emotions of the argument, we see birds ominously
perched on the power lines.

This conversation just before the birds attack the party reveals a
slight misstep in the continuity editing. In the location shots,
Melanie is just behind Mitch. When the scene cuts to studio
shots against a painted backdrop (better lighting), Melanie is in
front of Mitch — a failure to match-on-action.

As Mitch and Melanie get closer, the two other “birds” in
Mitch’s life watch jealously from below. Note that the three
women all occupy the same space on screen, with Mitch slightly
to the left of them. Again: as emotions run high, the birds are about
to attack!

The attack on the children’s party involved lots of wire-work,
mechanical birds, as well as trained birds. A huge number of
different camera shots add to the sense of chaos and confusion.

In the lead-up to the birds’ attack on the house, the tension
within the family continues, as Lydia tries to encourage
Melanie back to San Francisco as quickly as possible. Mitch’s
innocent sister says, “Just listen to those love birds,” as
Melanie reacts inwardly to Lydia’s hostility, and sees...

...the first intimation of...

...the birds’ attack on hearth and home. Again, Hitchcock
poses the question, why do the birds attack when they do? Each
attack multiplies the possible interpretations. A scene rich in
special effects.

Review
• What genre is The Birds? Explain your
answer.
• List a number of possible interpretations
for the birds’ behaviour in the film.
• Explain the ways in which classical
Hollywood continuity editing encourages
the audience to interpret the action.