Crows are considered intelligent animals with a strong sense of good togetherness. But those who observe them up close do not want to have any trouble with them – especially when they appear in large numbers. Now the good thing about the reality is that the birds won’t pick a fight with humans unless you provoke them. This equation is one of those things that are taken for granted that nobody would question in everyday life.
Director Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) must have been all the more delighted when, in 1961, he read a report in the newspaper from the northern Californian coastal town of Pleasure Point, in which the obvious shattered: around two in the morning, the residents were screaming and being hit it was said there that they had been roused from their sleep against the walls of their houses. According to the report, the residents came out with flashlights and their village was full of birds. Some of the animals that had crashed into cars and walls were injured on the ground. Many others appeared to be in a state of panic – crippling the residents with their beaks and claws.
Hitchcock personally called the Santa Cruz Sentinel to get a few more details. As a grand master of horror, he knew only too well that nothing terrorizes his fellows quite like when things get out of hand for no apparent reason. In the case of the birds from Pleasure Point, this was submitted later. It was said that eating an unfamiliar species of seaweed had left the seabirds disoriented and aggressive. But that didn’t have to play a role for the film that was just being created in Hitchcock’s head.
After thriving projects in the 1950s such as “Vertigo” or “Over the Rooftops of Nice”, the Brit was able to record an artistic and commercial mega success in 1960 with “Psycho”. That had finally catapulted him to the top of Hollywood, but as it is with such things – it was difficult for Hitchcock to continue. Now it suddenly seemed possible for him. And so he quickly set about implementing his idea of the wild animals that make people’s lives hell without anyone knowing why. The result was released in American cinemas in March 1963 and in German on September 20 of that year.
Hitchcock remained true to a small Californian coastal town as the setting for the action, but moved the action to Bodega Bay. When developing the plot, the true story was inspired by the story “The Birds” by the English author Daphne du Maurier from 1952. Blending both, the screenplay blended a story about a spoiled billionaire daughter, Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), who visits attorney Mitchell Brenner (Rod Taylor) in the California township after he teased her at a San Francisco store. Brenner tried in vain to buy “Love Birds” as a birthday present for his eleven-year-old sister Cathy – and Daniels got them for him.
The rest of the plot is relatively straightforward, because it’s all about strange things going on with birds in Bodega Bay, and here especially with crows. They enter the house through the chimney, they slowly gather on scaffolding, then attack children on the way home – an iconic scene. Above all, however, is the aggression of the people who despair of not being able to interpret the behavior of the birds. Of course, that was much more appealing than a beast like a tarantula, which mutated to oversize after a nuclear catastrophe, because at least there was an explanation for the monster spider.
Unparalleled is the moment when a local resident yells at Melanie Daniels that the animals have only been behaving badly since she’s been here: “They’re evil!” Alfred Hitchcock had once again succeeded in frying the nerve endings of his viewers – and that even without a body count. Of course, the thrill for the moviegoers had its price: on the set it was anything but comfortable. It all started with Grace Kelly, the director’s – let’s just say it – favorite blonde, opting for a moderately blissful existence as a princess in Monaco.
That’s why the Brit had to make do with the model Tippi Hedren. He had noticed her in an ad for diet drinks – and because diamonds are only created under the highest pressure, “Hitch” used her on the set with his perfectionism so much that she was on the verge of surrender. The scene with the attack under the roof alone took seven days, during which a raven injured Hedren in the face, so that she broke down crying: “It was the worst week of my life,” Hedren said afterwards.
To lend credibility to these words, the new star spent a week in the hospital from exhaustion. As for the male lead, Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant and got Rod Taylor, that’s all there is to it. Unlike after “Psycho”, the US press refused to celebrate the work, “Time” even wrote grandiosely about the topic of “senseless action”. It also wasn’t as successful as Psycho, grossing five million dollars, but The Birds still made hefty profits over the long run.
The master himself addressed his audience in a four-minute clip that replaced the trailer. There he philosophized about the relationship between humans and birds in general – with the sarcastic point that the animals owe it to homo sapiens sapiens, among other things, that they are locked in cages or shot dead for amusement while hunting. Alfred Hitchcock called The Birds his “most frightening film”.
In comparison to works like “Vertigo” or “Psycho” this is certainly in the eye of the beholder. But given how many contemporaries felt the film eyed our feathered friends more suspiciously than before, it certainly speaks to the thesis of the man who didn’t need an elaborate story or brute force to shock his audience.
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