McDowell 1

Bo McDowell

Dr. Casie Hermansson

ENGL 120

1 May 2022

1. Hitchcock’s idea of “torture the women” is shown multiple times throughout the film, the

main cast of women are almost primarily the targets of the birds’ attacks. This is seen in

the first attack, when the gull hits Melanie in the head near the beginning of the movie.

Then, again, at Cathy’s party; most of the partygoers were women: Melanie, Annie,

Cathy and her friends, and their mothers. The entire “torture the women” idea culminates

when Melanie is trapped in the phone booth. Chaos ensues, birds are flying everywhere,

cars are crashing, a man barely clinging to life bombards the side of the booth; Melanie is

being tortured. Certain scenes even seem to be emotional torture to the characters, with

dialogues between Melanie and Mitch, Annie, or Lydia being very uncomfortable in the

name of suspense, seeming more like interrogations than conversations.

2. The strength, intelligence, and maturity of women is also seen in the film. Melanie is

clearly shown as clever and intelligent, being able to track Mitch down, even hours away

from where she briefly met him. Cathy, while still being a child, displays this same

cleverness and intelligence, describing how she has learned all the ins and outs of the

plan for her secret “surprise” party. Melanie is also seen as successful and independent

later in the film when she lists her jobs and commitments back home to Mitch.
 McDowell 2

3. It is no secret that much of Hitchcock’s work contains Freudian elements, but to claim

that the entire plot of the film revolves around this is a bit of a stretch. The article

theorizes that the bird attacks are linked to the women and the drama surrounding them

affecting Mitch, always happening right before one another. This idea is flawed and

based on the misogynistic belief that Melanie is not the protagonist, but Mitch, and that

the world and all the women in the story revolve around him. Perhaps it is how films

were in the 60s, but the Freudian perspective of The Birds relies on middle-aged women,

Hallmark movie-esque romance and drama, and should not hold up in modern cinema.
 McDowell 3

Bo McDowell

Dr. Casie Hermansson

ENGL 120

1 May 2022

Unit 3: The Birds (Hitchcock Film)

Hitchcock’s adaption is not much of a horror movie by modern expectations. What it is

instead is a drama with some gore thrown in. This is further accentuated by the film’s ending.

Rarely in horror do we see the lead get to “ride off into the sunset” at the story’s conclusion, and

that is almost exactly what we get here. The protagonists seem generally alright, aside from some

cuts and scrapes.

That is the problem with the film adaption: there are no stakes. Most of the damage to the

town and residents is very brief and has no tie to Melanie. Annie is the only one of our main

characters that we see actually harmed (in this case killed), and she teetered between an

antagonistic and supportive role to Melanie throughout the story anyway. In a story where we

should be rooting for the protagonist, her allies and the townsfolk are confusingly cold and

distant, and it is Melanie’s relationships with them that take focus rather than the threat of the

birds.

It genuinely seems that Hitchcock forgot that he was making an adaption for the majority

of the film, and even still was confused when he made the ending as well. The decision to not

use the unfilmed ending was almost like he only realized it was absolutely nothing like the

source material right before production finished. The Freudian idea of the birds attacking in
 McDowell 4

relation to the characters’ interactions undermines the entire idea of the original novella. The

man vs Nature theme – with nature fighting back against mankind in an act of vengeance for its

crimes – is all but eradicated in the film, aside from one brief line from the ornithologist. The

unused ending of the film further desecrates this idea, emphasizing the character-driven

supernatural effects. In this ending the birds seem to stop attacking when Lydia and Melanie fix

their relationships, supporting the idea that somehow that caused the whole scenario. The makes

the plot stray further from what the real horror should be – the birds – and more into the drama-

centric story that Hitchcock creates.

The original book does the ending, and the story as a whole, the best. The entire story

focuses on Nat and his family. He is portrayed as a morally good man, someone to root for. We

see him react and adapt to the birds throughout the story. He sees them get more dangerous, and

we see this with him. We want him to succeed, and leaving the story open ended as du Maurier

does gives us hope that he may. Having witness throughout the story how powerful the birds are,

we the audience know that this sense of hope is just an illusion, and it is likely only a matter of

time before the birds overcome the family. This is important to emphasize the horror aspect of

the story, which is how the novella does this. We see the actual danger of the birds; we see that

you cannot survive them. This unyielding, clear and unstoppable threat is what makes it a good

horror story, and is something Hitchcock’s film lacks.

The ideal conclusion to a film adaption of du Maurier’s The Birds is a version more

faithful to the source material. This goes for the overall plot as well. The movie should have been

set in post-war, rural England, and revolved around Nat Hocken and his family surviving a fast,

vicious, and coordinated by local fowl. Hitchcock’s adaption(s) is insultingly unfaithful and

changes almost the entire plot, and nearly eliminates the one thing it keeps, the titular: The Birds.