0:06

1963. A young, wealthy San Francisco

0:08

socialite takes a trip to a

0:10

small, California

0:30

coastal town called Bodega

0:32

Bay to pursue a

0:34

potential future romantic partner.

0:37

She brings with her two

0:39

caged lovebirds. While approaching the

0:41

bay on a small boat, a

0:43

seagull randomly swoops down and

0:46

attacks her, drawing blood. The

0:50

next day, at a children's birthday

0:52

party, a swarm of birds begin

0:54

savagely attacking the children for no

0:57

reason. The

1:01

next day after that, a woman visits

1:04

her neighbor's house only to

1:06

find his eyeless, mutilated corpse having

1:08

been pecked to death in his

1:11

bedroom by birds. It

1:15

soon becomes very apparent that

1:17

these incidents aren't random or

1:19

unrelated. Something is causing

1:21

the birds of Bodega Bay

1:23

to viciously attack people, and

1:25

these attacks seem to be

1:28

getting increasingly aggressive.

1:41

Join me as we continue exploring

1:44

the evolution of nature in horror

1:46

films, and we discuss Alfred Hitchcock's

1:48

monster movie masterpiece, The Birds.

1:57

Welcome back to the evolution of horror, my

1:59

name is Mike Muncer and as ever

2:01

I am your host. In this podcast

2:03

we explore and dissect the history and

2:05

evolution of the horror genre one

2:08

subgenre at a time. We are

2:10

currently in the middle of our

2:12

tenth season exploring the evolution of

2:14

nature biting back in horror. And

2:17

this is part seven. It's

2:20

the biggie. This week we are talking

2:22

about one movie and one movie only,

2:25

Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds from 1963. This

2:29

will be an in-depth spoilerific discussion.

2:32

If you haven't seen this film, oh my god, give

2:35

yourself a treat. Please go and

2:37

watch it before you listen to our

2:39

conversation. So let's get

2:41

straight into it. Joining me to

2:43

discuss this film, a returning guest

2:45

on the podcast she was last

2:47

here during our home invasion season

2:49

to discuss the spiral staircase and

2:51

Alfred Hitchcock's dial-m for murder and

2:53

she's back. A big welcome back

2:55

to critic, author, writer, academic Alexandra

2:57

Helen Nicholas. Hello. Hello, it

3:00

is so nice to be back. It's so

3:02

lovely to have you back, Alexandra. How are things?

3:04

It's like it's late at night for me and

3:06

it's bright and early for you over in Australia

3:09

right now, right? It is. There's

3:11

literally birds sitting on the fence outside my

3:13

window which is a little bit daunting. Normally

3:15

it's like a nice idyllic view but this

3:17

morning I'm a little uncomfortable

3:21

with the gathering birds. I know.

3:23

Well, I love that. Well, that leads me

3:25

nicely maybe into what I want to talk

3:28

to you about first, which is this whole

3:30

idea of kind of this theme that I'm

3:32

covering this season of kind of nature coming

3:34

to get us. And

3:36

you know, I think it's, I have to ask

3:39

you as an Australian as well because it's been

3:42

so funny. So many people have already spoken

3:44

to me, previous kind of contributors about how

3:46

Australia is often portrayed at least in culture

3:49

as being such a scary place in terms

3:51

of the nature of the wildlife. Everything is

3:53

out to get you or kill you, right?

3:56

As an Australian yourself and movie lover and horror

3:58

lover, how do you... you feel about

4:00

these kind of big animal attack nature

4:03

bites back movies? Australia is

4:05

a strange place. I don't think that people

4:07

are aware just how, how especially

4:10

the country is populated. There's a couple of

4:12

big cities, mostly on the East coast. Um,

4:16

one or two dotted elsewhere around the country, again,

4:18

on the coasts. Everything else

4:20

is empty. Like it's, it's, um,

4:23

you really can't, I think that there's a

4:25

genuine surprise often with people overseas and that

4:27

they assume that there's like little towns or

4:29

no, there's nothing. It's, it's totally empty. Yeah.

4:31

And we grow up with that, you know?

4:33

So I think that we grow up with

4:35

an idea of space and, and, and this

4:37

sort of looming presence of, of this sort

4:39

of, of nature. Yeah. And

4:42

one of the things I never really thought of this

4:44

until talking to a friend who works at the zoo

4:46

here. Um, a couple of years

4:48

ago, we were talking about this movie and they have

4:50

a real passion for these kinds of animals. And they

4:52

said that the interesting thing about Australia, that's different from

4:54

a lot of other countries. Is

4:57

that if you talk to people in the United States, you

4:59

speak to people in Europe, especially maybe not so much Asia,

5:01

but there's a sense of scale in

5:03

that if an animal is big, it is more of

5:05

a threat. So a bear, very big, very scary,

5:07

a lion, very big, very scary. And the smaller things

5:10

get, Oh, it's a possum. You know, I would say

5:12

it's a cat, you know, Oh, it's a mouse. We're

5:15

almost back to front in that the smaller

5:17

things get the scarier that they are. So

5:19

a redback spider is tiny. Like if you

5:21

actually look up online, what the size of

5:24

a redback, we're not scared of the big

5:26

spiders. The big spiders are usually pretty harmless.

5:29

It's the really little ones that are that'll

5:31

fuck you up. Yeah. So

5:34

it's a weird, you know, we do have this proximity. You know,

5:36

if you have a barbecue, there'll be redbacks. Oh my

5:38

God. You know, on the, on the table,

5:40

they're everywhere, you know, and you just sort of, you

5:43

know, it's just part of life. I guess you just sort of live with

5:45

it in the same way that, you

5:47

know, I guess in

5:50

the site, it sounds like a weird point of comparison

5:52

and I'll probably regret making it later, but because

5:54

obviously there's a kind of human intervention issue,

5:57

but it's almost like Americans with guns. Yes.

5:59

Yeah. When I speak to Americans about gun

6:01

control, they're like, yeah, no, it's terrible. But what are

6:03

you going to do? You just learn to live with it. Yeah. We're

6:06

kind of like that with, yeah, again, not

6:08

a perfect metaphor. So I do apologize if that's what

6:10

it takes us to- No, I totally get

6:12

what you mean. Yeah. I mean, we don't

6:14

have spider drills at school, but I did go to

6:16

a primary school in the, which

6:18

was on the suburbs of the kind of the bush

6:20

and the city. And

6:23

it was like in the sort of 80s.

6:25

And so the toilet block was a separate

6:27

building from the school. And we

6:30

would have issues where if you were walking to the toilet

6:32

block on a summer day and there were snakes on the

6:34

path, they'd have to send us all

6:36

home because they couldn't run the school. If

6:38

you couldn't go to the bathroom, they couldn't have kids there.

6:40

So it was like a legal thing. So the number of

6:42

times I got sent home from school because they were like

6:44

tiger snakes on the footpath to get to the bathroom.

6:47

Oh my God. A lot. It happened a lot, which

6:50

again, I take for granted. It's like, oh yeah,

6:52

you know, we do we do life shooter drills,

6:55

whatever. Again, not a perfect parallel, but you know,

6:57

you kind of do live with it. No, this

6:59

is this is so alien to me in the

7:01

UK because, you know, the UK is the most

7:04

mild country imaginable. We have mild weather. We have

7:06

my like nothing in nature will actually kill you.

7:08

Like a bee or a wasp stinging you is

7:10

about as dangerous as you get here, really. And

7:13

so it is like it is like another world

7:15

to us. Have you ever had any

7:17

like hair raising

7:19

experiences, you know, generally with

7:21

animals or nature? So my dad

7:23

got bitten by a red bat. Fuck. When I was a

7:25

kid and that was terrifying and he survived, but only because

7:28

he got to the hospital very quickly. Oh my

7:30

God. I had there

7:32

was a Christmas day when I was a teenager and

7:34

I got a jumper, like a sweater that I'd really

7:37

wanted. And it was an unusual. It's

7:39

usually the middle of summer here when we have

7:41

Christmas, but it was an unusually cool day. And

7:43

I was on our trampoline and I jumped off

7:45

and I put the jumper on and I felt

7:47

the tag scrape the back of my neck. Oh

7:49

God. It's the scrape going

7:52

and I kind of thought that's weird. And I

7:54

reached around and I grabbed a spider and I

7:56

kind of squashed, squashed it as I grabbed it.

7:59

And my neck blew. up to the size of an

8:01

orange. Oh, fuck. And my parents were like

8:04

this, you know, I had to go to the emergency

8:06

room and because it was Christmas day, it was like

8:08

student doctors and I'll never forget was a young woman

8:10

because I only had like the remains of a spider.

8:13

They basically they were so stressed

8:15

out. It was this young woman who was very

8:17

new to the job. And I suspect she probably

8:19

didn't pursue a medical career in the long term.

8:21

But she said, look, if it's a male, you're

8:24

fine. If it's a female, it's fatal and it's

8:26

too late. There's not. Oh, my God.

8:28

And looking back, except for the swelling,

8:30

most of my symptoms were probably just stressed. Like

8:32

I was like vomiting and I

8:34

was really freaking out. It was huge. It was

8:36

like a big thing. And

8:40

I remember feeling like really betrayed. It's like

8:42

I defended you guys spiders. Like I've never

8:44

been a spider hater. Yeah. Yeah.

8:47

So I was on your side. You know, if I find

8:49

a spider inside, I'll put a glass over it. Yeah.

8:51

You guys betrayed me. So I'm

8:53

a little I've been a little more overzealous

8:55

since then with like squashing spiders. But I

8:57

don't go out of my way to squash

8:59

them. No, fair enough. They turned on me.

9:02

They turned on you. They turned.

9:04

Exactly. Well, I guess

9:06

there's that feeling. I mean, this is again, this comes

9:08

across in a lot of movies set on Australia. It's

9:11

almost like we're on their turf though, aren't we? That's

9:13

the thing, you know, like maybe

9:15

we're the ones that shouldn't be there. You know,

9:17

without getting too academic about it, I think

9:19

that you have in that incorporated

9:21

into that a lot of

9:23

colonial anxieties. Oh, yes. Yes. Like the

9:26

they, you know, who is the quote unquote,

9:28

they, and we're talking about animals, but we're

9:30

really talking about First

9:32

Nations people who, you know, we live on stolen

9:34

land. There's no treaty. Yeah. There's still no treaty.

9:38

Colonial violence is still rife. You know,

9:40

you look at things like Aboriginal deaths

9:42

in custody, suicide rates, domestic violence, like

9:44

it's, it's, it's an ongoing thing. So

9:46

I think in Australia that

9:48

you can kind of look

9:51

at eco horror films in Australia as a kind of

9:53

way of teasing out these sort

9:56

of broader colonial anxieties about the fact that

9:58

we live on stolen land. him

22:00

that he'd actually bought the rights to Daphne Demoria's

22:02

short story, The Birds. You

22:05

know, of course, he'd already adapted her novels, Jamaica

22:07

Inn and Rebecca. And that's how The

22:09

Birds was born, was that he

22:11

was sort of, it was

22:13

just this sort of random, like not knowing what to

22:16

do and then having this sort of random new

22:18

story. And it sort of, you know, it all kind

22:20

of happened in that moment in

22:22

his mind. I love how much

22:24

he's always kind of trying new wild

22:26

different things with a lot of his

22:28

movies, but this is, I

22:31

don't know, would you say this is his most ambitious

22:33

film that he made? 100%,

22:36

absolutely. And the more that I watch it, the more

22:38

I appreciate it on that level, that

22:41

kind of, you know, experimental craft. Rope

22:44

gets a lot of talk

22:46

quite understandably. You know,

22:48

there's a lot of noise about Rope being his

22:50

most formally daring movie. And

22:53

I think, you know, obviously the queer themes

22:55

in that film, but also formally, you know,

22:57

that it's ostensibly shot in one single take.

22:59

I think technically it's not, you know, you can sort of see

23:01

where they changed the film, but, you know, it

23:03

looks like it's shot in one single take. But, you

23:06

know, I think the Birds is

23:09

challenged, perhaps only by Vertigo for

23:11

being his bleakest film tonally. And

23:14

stylistically, I think this film doesn't get the

23:16

praise that it really deserves. You know, I

23:18

think it's quite radical and quite experimental. You

23:20

know, if you look at what other,

23:23

what was happening in Hollywood at the time, this

23:26

film is just next level. It's just doing something quite

23:29

different, you know, and obviously things like,

23:31

you know, cinematography and optical effects are

23:36

really key things here. Editing. I mean,

23:39

just in terms of editing alone, you know, people

23:41

throw phrases like, you know, cutting edge or ahead

23:43

of its time around really kind

23:45

of easily. But to me, this film genuinely

23:47

was ahead of its time just on editing

23:49

alone, not even taking cinematography or optical effects

23:52

into account. That's really interesting. Yeah, I agree.

23:54

And maybe we should start by talking about

23:56

some of those kind of technical elements before

23:58

we get into the other. kind of

24:00

meatier stuff. You know, Psycho was

24:02

this kind of stripped back, you

24:05

know, Psycho was a really kind

24:07

of narratively ambitious film, I

24:09

suppose, in a way, right? But, you know,

24:11

actually, technically, it was back to kind of

24:13

TV crew, black and white, right? Seemed

24:15

a little bit kind of lower budget. Then

24:17

we get to this and, you know, again,

24:19

like, how do you find the the cinematography

24:21

just the look, I suppose, of this movie?

24:23

To me, like, the cinematography and the editing

24:26

is so closely linked. I

24:28

mean, if you look at the big films that

24:30

were winning Oscars around this time, you know,

24:32

it was things like I think Mary Poppins

24:34

and Sound of Music were the

24:36

films that were getting like Oscars for best editing. And

24:38

if you look at the editing in those films, they're

24:40

amazing films. And I love those films. But what this

24:43

film was doing was creating a new

24:45

language of film, like in a really, like,

24:48

it sounds hyperbolic, but in a really,

24:50

really key way, this film was

24:52

doing really amazingly fresh new things.

24:56

Same with cinematography, you know, like Robert Birx, who

24:58

shot this film, you know, he'd worked with Hitchcock

25:00

a lot, a lot, you know, I think

25:02

he did I confess, darling for murder, catch a thief, trouble

25:04

with Harry man who knew too much. Wrong

25:07

man, vertigo, you know, all of those big ones, I

25:09

think he did Money again after this. And

25:13

it's just so it's so

25:16

different, you know, the optical effects, I think,

25:18

are linked really closely to the to the cinematography

25:21

of this film. And you know, the Oscar

25:23

for this year for optical effects went to

25:25

Cleopatra because it had all these giant crowd

25:28

shots. Yeah, I just don't think people in

25:30

the industry, certainly in Hollywood, at least really

25:34

understood what they were doing. I just think

25:36

it was so ahead of its time that

25:38

they just didn't grasp just how radically different

25:41

what they were doing was. And

25:43

it's just that classic thing too, of this

25:45

was a this was a monster

25:47

movie, this was a horror movie, right? And

25:49

I think more again, more than any of

25:52

his other movies up until this point, it

25:54

really was this overt monster movie and therefore

25:57

wouldn't have been as critically well received as a rear

25:59

window. or a Vertigo, right, as well,

26:01

which is so interesting. Especially after

26:03

Psycho, which was considered a sort of, you know,

26:05

this sort of, you know,

26:07

drive-in fall from grace. It's like, well,

26:10

you know, he's just making monster films

26:12

now. He's just making horror films now.

26:14

So yeah, I don't think that those

26:16

films really got, especially

26:19

this film, I just don't think it really got the kind of acknowledgement.

26:23

Yeah. Just for craft that it

26:25

really deserved at the time. It's unbelievable. And we'll

26:27

talk a little bit about all the actual kind

26:29

of bird effects later, but the, you know, those,

26:32

it always feels like as well that Hitchcock's

26:34

movie, so many of the big ones, they

26:37

fit into one of two camps where they

26:39

are the very kind of restricted, claustrophobic, the

26:41

rope, the rear window, the dial M, the

26:44

kind of like taut, tight thrillers, often set

26:46

in kind of claustrophobic locations, or

26:48

the big travelogue kind of, you know, North

26:50

by Northwest and to catch a thief, where

26:52

he's out glamorous locations and outdoors

26:54

and that kind of thing, right? And again,

26:56

this movie kind of, this is

26:58

the first time he's really kind of had

27:00

that big scale, those big location shoots, but

27:03

with tense horror as well, right?

27:05

Which is something we haven't really seen

27:07

up until this point. Straddling both and

27:09

bringing both of those together. Yeah, really.

27:11

Really seamlessly, yeah. Beautiful, right? And again,

27:13

like, I love the world he builds

27:15

with Bodega Bay, you know, again,

27:17

like the look of it, the cinematography, the

27:20

production design, the people, the

27:22

townsfolk, like again, like, what do you think of

27:24

like the general kind of world building, I guess, that we

27:27

get in this film? It was years

27:29

after watching this for the first time that I even found out

27:31

that Bodega Bay was a real place. I had no idea. And

27:34

Hitchcock was apparently obsessed with this

27:36

little town. And I believe

27:38

that he even had at one point,

27:41

he photographed every single person who lived

27:43

there and gave those photographs to the

27:45

costuming department. Amazing.

27:47

You know, it's the same place where Carpenter shot the fog, you

27:50

know, it has a real village vibe. There's

27:52

something almost European about it, which I think

27:54

is really, you know, taps into

27:56

those kinds of Hitchcock origins, you know, back

27:59

in Britain. the

34:00

birds being a kind of stand-in for

34:02

the German planes during the Blitz. Hitchcock

34:05

himself has talked at times quite

34:07

openly about that connection to the

34:10

birds as well, and his growing

34:12

up in the United Kingdom, and

34:14

his mother's experience, and these memories

34:16

of the Blitz, the

34:19

kind of the things circling up ahead that would

34:21

cause you terror and horror. The

34:24

book, in a way, I think that metaphor is

34:26

a bit more obvious. Maybe

34:28

obvious isn't quite the word, but it's

34:30

certainly less, again, ambiguous than

34:32

I think it is in the film. Yeah, I

34:34

was going to say, you know, not to sort

34:36

of dive straight into maybe the hardest question, but

34:39

what do you think the film

34:41

is about? Like, you know, is

34:45

there any of that kind of subtext or

34:47

metaphor coming through very clearly for you? Like,

34:49

what do you think Hitchcock is actually exploring

34:51

with this story? I think I have

34:53

two answers for that. One of them is,

34:55

and I guess both of them are related to age

34:58

and the way that you engage with film differently as

35:00

you kind of get older. I think

35:03

I sit a lot more easily

35:05

now with this film being really

35:08

ambiguous. I don't know what it's about.

35:10

I don't know if it is about

35:12

anything in particular. I think that there's

35:14

a kind of ambient, amorphous, vagueness about

35:18

the birds that actually is what makes it so

35:20

disturbing. Like, maybe it's, you know what I mean?

35:23

Like, it could be anything and it could be

35:25

nothing and it could be, you know, maybe

35:27

the subtext is text, maybe text is

35:29

subtext, maybe it is about birds, maybe

35:31

it is about nature. And that actually

35:34

leads me back to, you know, I

35:36

think I wrote an essay on this

35:38

in high school, maybe, gosh, you know,

35:40

young, young film brain, young developing film

35:42

brain. And I remember

35:44

very aggressively arguing that the film was

35:46

a revenge film told from the perspective

35:48

of the lovebirds. And

35:51

the old, you know, I was just a dumb kid, but the

35:53

older that I get, the more that I think, well, maybe, you

35:55

know, that kind of holds water, like that's possible, you

35:57

know, it's as valid as anything else, I guess. I

42:00

don't think you can really untether to

42:02

be Hedron's story from Melanie's story in

42:04

that sense. That's so interesting, yeah, because

42:07

she is a funny, odd... She's

42:09

an odd character. She's a kind of fascinating character, I

42:11

think. And I actually think to be Hedron, you know,

42:13

again, she gets a lot of flack for that performance.

42:15

I think she's great in it. And,

42:17

you know, maybe because there was something to that,

42:20

like you say, that kind of connection. But this

42:22

character who just kind of like, just

42:24

sort of drops everything and takes this trip to

42:26

Bodega Bay to follow this guy that she's got

42:28

the hots for, basically. And that whole sequence with

42:31

her like, sort of playing a little joke on

42:33

him and like, on the speed boat and watching

42:35

him and hiding and sneaking into his house

42:37

and everything. And it's like, this is such

42:39

an odd... It's such an odd first act

42:41

to what... to the movie that it eventually

42:43

becomes, right, as well. And it's so interesting,

42:45

that progression that her character goes through. And

42:48

I think, yeah, and again, like the acting,

42:50

I think to be Hedron is great, you

42:52

know, in this. And I think those moments,

42:54

particularly that moment you mentioned, where she's attacked

42:56

by the birds at the end of the

42:58

film, people kind of mock that

43:00

scene a little bit as well. But I

43:03

get when I watch that film, that it's kind of... That

43:06

scene, that it feels kind of like we're

43:08

not watching to be Hedron act, actually. It feels like

43:10

we're actually just watching to be Hedron panic,

43:13

right? And we watch her traumatized. And I

43:15

think that's why it feels kind of quite

43:17

weird in a movie acting kind of a...

43:20

In a way, you know, like, because something about it does

43:22

feel different to the rest of the film. And that is,

43:24

like you say, because we're actually watching Hitchcock

43:26

torture this actress, basically. It's such

43:29

an indulgent moment on

43:31

his part. And I don't, you know, except

43:33

for maybe the first time you watch it,

43:35

I don't think that you can strip that

43:38

away. You know, that reality of, you know, what

43:40

I'm watching is a young woman being tortured. And

43:44

she's, you know... I

43:46

do think that... I do think that you're right. I

43:48

think that she almost... Considering

43:51

her lack of experience with screen acting

43:53

in particular, and

43:55

certainly working in that kind of that level, you

43:57

know, of a production, you know,

43:59

they sort of be... big movie by this big,

44:01

big director. I do think that she kind

44:03

of fights to kind of

44:05

bring some kind of empathy and some kind of

44:07

complexity to the character that probably wasn't there in

44:10

Hitchcock's mind. You know, I think he, as I

44:12

said, you know, she's a shallow playgirl. You know,

44:14

I think that she really kind of did

44:18

an amazing job actually bringing more kind of

44:20

depth and complexity to Melanie that was probably

44:22

there on paper originally. And

44:25

I think that that payoff is that discomfort that

44:27

we feel in that in that sequence at the

44:29

end. And I think laughing at it is a

44:31

really good way to kind of, you

44:34

know, and saying that it's kind of dopey is a really

44:36

easy way to kind of release that

44:38

discomfort that what we're watching is actually

44:41

isn't about this character. What we're watching

44:43

is, you know, it's sort of like

44:45

the gender political mechanics of Hollywood are

44:47

exposed for this moment. Yeah. And

44:49

it's really uncomfortable. At the very least,

44:52

it's uncomfortable. Absolutely. So kind

44:54

of finding it funny and kind of hokey, I think

44:56

is a really nice default kind of, you know, not

44:58

have that conversation. Absolutely. And I think it is, you

45:00

know, we have to talk about these kind of characters

45:02

and performances in this because, like

45:04

I said, it takes a long time for

45:07

the bird horror to actually start, right? There

45:09

are there are certain monster movies out there

45:11

where the characters are kind of slightly incidental

45:13

because you're there to watch just the monster

45:16

madness or whatever. But this movie

45:18

isn't like that because we spend about an

45:20

hour just with the characters before shit really

45:22

hits the fan in Bodega Bay, right? So

45:24

I think we do need to talk about

45:27

the importance of these characters and the performances.

45:29

And there are loads of great interesting fun

45:31

characters and performances in this film, not just Tippi

45:33

Hedgeman, of course. The film just the

45:35

film does kind of center on almost

45:38

a love triangle, right? Between

45:40

Melanie and this man that

45:43

she's followed to Bodega Bay, Mitch Brenner

45:45

and his mother, his what

45:48

may at first appear like a

45:50

slightly overbearing mother, Lydia Brenner, played

45:53

brilliantly by Jessica Tandy. What do

45:55

you think of that

45:57

character of Lydia,

46:00

and the strange dynamic between Lydia

46:02

and Melanie. It's

46:05

funny, it's one of these things again about

46:07

just getting older. So my relationship to the

46:09

character of Lydia has really changed, really, really

46:12

changed over time. When

46:15

I was younger, I very much took

46:17

Lydia on face value. She's an old

46:19

hag, she's sort of a fairly uncomplicated

46:21

manifestation of Hitchcock's quite famous sort of

46:23

mummy issues, his dislike of older women

46:25

or his issues with

46:27

older women. But I look at Jessica

46:29

Tandy now and I'm like, oh my God, she was only 53. She

46:32

was really young. I mean, to

46:35

give you an idea of how young that

46:37

is, she's the same age as Lydia in

46:39

this film as Kate Blanchett

46:41

was as Tarr. And

46:44

as Nicole Kidman was in that AMC

46:46

cinema ads, she's the same age that

46:48

Jennifer Aniston is now. There's

46:51

a scene in particular where it's just her and

46:53

Melanie. I think Melanie is making her tea and

46:55

it's just after Lydia's found the body. My

46:58

relationship to that scene has really changed over time in

47:01

that I think when I was younger, I just sort

47:03

of dismissed it as she's a sort of hysterical

47:05

old woman. And

47:07

I look at it now and I don't

47:09

see a clingy mother. I read it the

47:12

way that she's talking. If

47:14

you actually listen to what she's saying, it's

47:16

not grief. This

47:19

is somebody pretty much with a kind of crippling

47:21

clinical depression. And

47:24

I think that that

47:26

really creates a lot more compassion, I think,

47:28

for that character than she's just this sort

47:30

of uptight woman who won't

47:32

let go of her kids. She

47:34

actually sounds really, really depressed. Yeah.

47:37

I think that's really interesting. And I think you're right.

47:40

It's easy to think going into this that she is

47:42

going to be the wicked evil

47:44

mother, right? Like the Mrs. Bates, basically,

47:46

right? We just had Psycho before this.

47:48

Same hair, right? Yeah, exactly. But

47:51

it's not at all, actually. Jessica Tandy doesn't

47:53

play her like that. And there isn't just

47:55

this kind of, I don't

47:58

know, venom and hatred between these two women, Like

48:00

it does seem a bit more nuanced and more complicated

48:02

than that, I think, right? This kind of whole dynamic,

48:04

this kind of triangle, if you want to call it

48:06

that, with Mitch as well. What

48:08

do you think of Mitch Brenner as the kind of

48:11

like the love interest, I guess, you know, the male

48:13

lead played by Rod Taylor? I don't know.

48:15

Mitch is, I mean, I think he's great. I think that

48:17

it's such a great, a

48:20

really playful setup with

48:23

him. I think he, you know, he's exactly the

48:25

right actor for the part in that he is

48:27

kind of almost bland to start with. But

48:30

he's such, you know, he's such that kind of hitchcocky

48:33

and tough guy. But in a way,

48:35

I think there's something about his physical

48:37

presence that is quite different from

48:39

a lot of, you know, from your James Stewart's

48:41

and from your Cary Grant's, you know, he's a

48:43

bit kind of butcher. And

48:46

I think that that means that, I

48:50

don't know, there's something about the Mitch's sort of

48:52

emotional kind of complexity when it comes to his

48:54

relationship with all of these different women. I

48:57

think if it was played by somebody like Cary Grant or

48:59

played by somebody like James Stewart, it

49:01

would come across as a bit more sadistic, certainly

49:03

in terms of his relationship with Annie. Yeah.

49:06

But something about the way that Taylor plays

49:09

that character, I think he gets away with

49:11

it. And I think that, you know,

49:13

when he kind of trolls

49:16

Melanie, which he does at various points, this

49:18

sort of playful kind of flirt trolling, we

49:21

do take it on a kind of face value. You know, we don't

49:23

really read a kind of more

49:25

maligned complexity into it. Or I think if

49:27

it was in the hands of another actor,

49:31

it would come across as a little bit more

49:33

sadistic. Yes. And previously to

49:35

this, a hitchcock had portrayed a lot of these

49:37

kinds of men who had

49:40

close relationships with their mothers as being either queer

49:42

coded or psychopaths or both. Right. You know, again,

49:44

Norman Bates, but you think of Strangers on a

49:46

Train and a whole bunch of other similar movies

49:48

like that, you know, again, like, is he doing

49:51

something similar here with Mitch? Do you think is

49:53

there any kind of queer coding or subtext in

49:55

there or is it easy going for something different?

49:57

There's a really interesting line in the film that's

49:59

all. always struck me because it doesn't fit.

50:01

Like it just, it's such a strange line. And

50:03

the more that I hear it, the more interesting

50:06

I think it is. And it's,

50:08

it's the conversation between Melanie and

50:10

Annie at Annie's house. And

50:12

they're talking about Mitch and Lydia. And

50:15

Annie says in passing, maybe there's never

50:17

been anything between Mitch and any girl.

50:20

And she uses that line to sort of, you

50:24

know, she's sort of dismissing the idea of

50:26

Freudian mummy issues. And even Annie

50:28

herself sort of writes that kind of take

50:30

off. But it's such a weird line. Maybe

50:32

there's never been anything between Mitch and Annie

50:34

girl. Yeah. It's such a, it's such a,

50:37

it feels really important. There's all of these lines in

50:40

this film that sort of seem

50:42

kind of random and kind of untethered.

50:45

But the more that you think about them, the

50:48

one that I come back to a lot too,

50:50

just speaking of the kind of gender politics is

50:52

the mother figure in the diner or in the

50:54

restaurant scene. And that incredible moment where

50:56

she completely loses her shit and she runs up

50:58

and she sort of breaks the fourth wall. And

51:00

she screams to Melanie that, you know, this is

51:02

all your fault. People said that this all started

51:05

happening when it's when you arrive. And she doesn't

51:07

use the word witch, but that's exactly what she's saying.

51:09

And it's such a, it's such

51:11

a privileged moment formally in the film

51:13

and that fourth wall is really shattered.

51:17

And it really opens up. I think, you

51:19

know, moments like that, this, maybe there's never

51:21

been anything between Mitch and any girl, these

51:23

really interesting lines that I think when you

51:25

stop and actually think about them, they add

51:27

so much more complexity to this film that

51:29

we might, that we might've picked up on

51:31

the first or second time watching it. Yeah,

51:33

for sure. And you've mentioned Annie there,

51:35

you know, Suzanne Plachette, again, like really

51:37

lovely performance, really interesting character. Again, there

51:39

are readings of her character as kind

51:41

of queer coded as well, right? What

51:43

do you think of that? And, and,

51:45

and Annie's kind of place within this

51:47

whole narrative. I'm, I'm the first one

51:49

to go into bat for, for queer folk

51:52

in classical cinema. I love

51:55

it. I think it's there more than we think it is. Yeah,

51:57

especially in Hitchcock. It's usually everywhere. I

52:00

would love nothing more than for Annie

52:02

to be queer. I

52:05

think she's, you know, so many of the women in this

52:07

film are just so unhappy. I

52:10

would love her to be happy. But

52:12

I think that I just don't see it.

52:14

I have to say I think that it's, that

52:17

would be a really nice alternative to

52:19

what I see is actually happening, which

52:21

is that she's almost post sexual. I

52:24

wouldn't say asexual, but she's sort of like she's

52:26

been so shattered by this experience with Mitch that

52:29

she's like kind of like what's the word that

52:31

they used to use in the olden days. She's

52:33

like a spinster. Right. Yeah. You know,

52:35

she's she's she's just written herself off

52:38

as a sexual being completely. She's

52:40

sort of post romance, post sexual. She's

52:43

done. She's cooked by

52:46

this experience with this dude. And and,

52:48

you know, again, I think it's really interesting that we kind

52:50

of let him off the

52:53

hook for that, whereas other Hitchcock male characters we

52:55

might not. But for some

52:57

reason, I think Mitch gets away with it. And I think,

52:59

you know, I don't think it's

53:01

a queer romance, but I do think one of the

53:03

most interesting things about this film is that while everything

53:05

sort of on the surface looks like it's pointing towards

53:07

this sort of romance

53:10

between Mitch and Melanie, that

53:13

real crescendo that we get, that romantic

53:15

crescendo where the lovers look in each

53:17

other's eyes at a really key moment

53:19

doesn't actually happen between Melanie and Mitch.

53:21

It happens between Lydia and Melanie. Yeah.

53:24

The car as they drive away. And I

53:26

think that that's obviously not a sexual thing.

53:28

I think that it's a it's a maternal

53:30

romance. You know, that Lydia kind of rediscovers

53:32

her her neat, you know, her maternal, gentle

53:35

side. Yes. Her kind

53:37

of giving maternal side. And Melanie finds the

53:39

mother that she never found. So

53:42

I do think it's a romance, but I think it's

53:44

actually a romance between Lydia and Melanie rather than Melanie

53:47

and Mitch. Totally. I agree with that.

53:49

It's not it's not a film that's that

53:51

interested in kind of

53:53

sexual chemistry between Mitch and Melanie, I don't

53:55

think. Right. In fact, it does the opposite

53:57

where it lumps her into this

53:59

family. unit, right? All of

54:01

a sudden she's become this mother, daughter,

54:03

wife, whatever, right? You know, Melanie within

54:06

a couple of days of being here

54:08

in this community, because also you've got

54:11

little Kathy played by very young

54:13

Veronica Cartwright as well. Amazing, right?

54:15

Scream creamed from the very beginning.

54:17

I think she, I mean, especially at this

54:19

point in her career, I think she's so

54:21

interesting. I mean, she obviously wouldn't have had

54:23

the autonomy to be choosing these roles for

54:25

herself, but this is around the same time

54:27

that she was in The Children's Hour, the

54:29

William Wyler film, the amazing

54:32

kind of lesbian psychodrama with Audrey

54:34

Hepburn and Shirley Maclean. And Veronica

54:36

Cartwright plays a really important part

54:38

in that film as well. Really

54:41

complex roles for a little kid

54:44

to play. I mean,

54:46

in a way in The Birds, she's sort of the most

54:48

wholesome thing

54:50

in it, but it's a pretty dark film

54:52

to put a kid in, you know? And

54:54

I think she's so fascinating in this movie.

54:56

She's great, isn't she? Particularly in the context

54:58

of these sort of broader, you know, things that she

55:01

was doing at that particular point in her career and

55:03

later in her career too, right? You know, the amazing

55:06

invasion of the body snatchers, which

55:09

is a v-swick, you know, amazing stuff that she's made of

55:11

too. Yes. Incredible, right? Incredible. I talked about her a

55:13

lot when we did Alien as well

55:15

and how she kind of, she got a

55:17

back, but she, you know, again,

55:19

it was that, it fell into that kind of thing

55:22

where a lot of people found

55:24

her irritating in films like Alien and maybe to

55:27

an extent invasion of the body snatchers as well

55:29

because she's the one who cries more and is

55:31

the one that panics more, you know, compared to

55:33

Ellen Ripley or whatever. But she

55:35

always, I think, brings so much humanity. I

55:37

think like she really brings something to a

55:40

lot of these horror films that you need

55:42

as well, right? And I think she's always

55:44

so unbelievably compelling to watch, including in this

55:46

movie where, you know, we'll get to all

55:48

the horror in a minute because you've seen

55:50

children actually attacked and killed on

55:52

screen. So you do worry for Kathy, right? You

55:54

don't know necessarily that Kathy is definitely going to

55:57

make it, you know? Absolutely. And we do, you

55:59

know, and it Again, we have that weird

56:01

sort of refusal that she has to give

56:03

up her lovebirds, which is so weird when

56:05

you think about it. It's like the birds

56:08

are attacking. Like they're

56:10

coming through the fireplace. They've just

56:12

attacked Melanie. She's now catatonic. But

56:15

Kathy refuses to give up her birds. And it's such

56:17

a, it's such a murky

56:21

thing for her to insist on, a kind of

56:23

morally weird thing for her to insist on. Very

56:26

strange film. Veronica Cartwright won me forever

56:28

as a horror icon. And it's, it's

56:31

kind of largely forgotten now, but Witches

56:33

of Eastwick, I'm Australian. It's George Miller.

56:35

Oh. We lose our citizenship

56:37

if we can't recite. Of course. You know, every single

56:39

scene in every single George Miller film. But

56:42

there's a scene in the Witches of Eastwick where she vomits

56:44

cherries. Unbelievable. I never got over

56:46

that scene. It's one of my

56:48

favorite movie pukes. Yes. And

56:50

like when I think of Veronica Cartwright in horror, that's actually

56:52

what I default to first. Yeah. It's

56:55

like she did the greatest vomit. It's

56:57

like a tube of cherry pukes. It's

57:00

incredible. Yeah. Unbelievable puke. So

57:02

grim. Such an odd film. Such an

57:04

odd film. I love it. I love it. It's

57:08

so, it's mad. Very weird. So let's talk

57:10

about the birds themselves in this. You know,

57:12

what, what is it

57:14

particularly about birds, do you think, as animals

57:16

that makes them work so well for a

57:18

kind of horror story like this? You know,

57:20

we're going to talk about so many movies

57:23

across this series about spiders, about sharks, about

57:25

snakes. Birds are quite

57:27

different, right? Like it's interesting. It's an interesting choice

57:29

of animal for this kind of a horror movie. I

57:31

think it's a really, really important point because

57:33

there's not a lot of other things that,

57:35

not a lot of other animals that do

57:37

the same thing in that, you know, like

57:40

one spider is enough, you know, like a giant

57:42

spider in a movie is enough to terrify you.

57:45

A giant killer shark is enough to terrify or

57:47

bear is enough to terrify you. One

57:49

bird is pretty soft, you know, like

57:51

the individual, one or two birds, you

57:53

know, the lovebirds, like a couple of

57:55

birds is fine. It's this critical

57:57

mass that is where the terror comes from.

58:00

It's the sheer bulk of

58:02

the presence of birds. And again, I go back to

58:04

the bird specialist. Is

58:06

it ornithologist? I'm sorry if it's not.

58:10

The bird lady, it's saying, if

58:12

different species of birds are communicating

58:14

and plotting, we are fucked. We

58:16

are done. We

58:19

are toast if that's happening.

58:22

And so it's the sheer bulk and

58:24

the sheer presence of the number of

58:26

birds that are getting

58:29

together. And we get that really played

58:31

out quite explicitly with that amazing scene.

58:33

The perfect scene in a perfect film

58:35

is that incredible scene at the schoolhouse

58:37

where Melanie's sitting outside quietly and one

58:40

or two birds is fine, but we see more

58:42

birds join and you could see Melanie kind of

58:45

hang on and then more and more and more

58:47

arrive and the tension increases as the number of

58:49

birds increases. So it's quite literal

58:51

that one bird is fine. A

58:53

hundred birds, maybe not so much, 5,000 birds

58:56

get out. No,

58:58

I love it. I think it's such a clever thing because

59:02

they're animals that probably most of us

59:04

around the world see every day and

59:06

don't think about. They are there always

59:10

in some form or other and we

59:12

don't think of them as a threat,

59:14

but they outnumber us like tenfold or

59:16

whatever, don't they? And I think that

59:18

idea of there's something kind of uncanny

59:20

about it, isn't there? Rather than taking

59:22

something that is explicitly scary, like a

59:25

shark, taking something that is every day

59:27

and normal and twisting it and subverting

59:29

it. And we haven't really talked

59:31

about the sound design in this movie actually, but

59:34

the lack of score and instead those

59:36

kind of distorted bird noises as well,

59:38

I think is just genius on Hitchcock's

59:41

part that the birds themselves provide the

59:43

score and the soundtrack to this movie.

59:46

Right. And that kind of electronic

59:48

manipulation, it sort of defamiliarizes it. So

59:50

we know it's birds and we recognize

59:52

it as birds, but it's also not

59:54

birds at the same time. So there's

59:57

that strange tension between. familiarity

1:00:00

and the

1:00:04

sense, the intuitive, sensory sense that this isn't

1:00:06

right. Yeah. You know, and that the soundtrack

1:00:08

really brings that to life. It kind of

1:00:10

renders the birds uncanny in a very kind

1:00:12

of meaningful, practical way. What

1:00:24

I think about sound and this film, I'm

1:00:27

always drawn as much to the

1:00:29

silences and to the sound

1:00:31

of speaking. And so

1:00:33

much of the way that this

1:00:36

film is paced and structured, I

1:00:38

think, is really kind of closely

1:00:40

connected to sound in that there's so

1:00:42

much chatter in that first part of

1:00:44

the film. It's just like this constant,

1:00:47

often in name banter. Yeah. You

1:00:49

know, and it really fills

1:00:52

the air. You know, we don't notice that

1:00:54

there's no traditional soundtrack here, but

1:00:56

it's almost like the supremacy of

1:00:58

this sort of primeval force of

1:01:00

birds sort of takes over language itself

1:01:03

when we get to that final kind

1:01:05

of horror act of the film. And

1:01:07

the talking just subsides. It's almost like

1:01:10

the sort of primitive regression in

1:01:12

that we can't talk our way out

1:01:14

of this. There's nothing left to say. Talking

1:01:16

can't help us now. And the

1:01:19

birds, you know, this is a primal noise of

1:01:21

the birds sort of takes over and really

1:01:24

kind of replaces the

1:01:26

chatter, the so-called sort of civilized,

1:01:29

progressive noise of humans is really

1:01:31

taken over by this sort of

1:01:33

supremacy of the primal, you know,

1:01:35

this supremacy of the pre-verbal. And

1:01:39

so I think that we experience this film on

1:01:41

a really sensory level beyond the kind of sensory

1:01:43

way that we experience, you know, horror, you know,

1:01:45

oh, she's being attacked by a bird and oh,

1:01:47

the birds are sweeping. Like there's that sensory thing.

1:01:49

But I also think there's something really, really, really

1:01:52

primal and visceral and sensory about

1:01:54

the way that sound works as

1:01:56

a general thing. That's such a

1:01:59

good point, I think. that the pacing and

1:02:01

structure of this film is so interesting and

1:02:03

it was something that I didn't appreciate when

1:02:05

I was younger. Same. When I

1:02:07

was an idiot teenager I thought this film was slow.

1:02:09

I thought it was slow, I thought it took too

1:02:11

long to get to the horror,

1:02:13

right? Now I watch it and I

1:02:15

think you're absolutely right that beautiful structure

1:02:17

that it has where it's like chatter,

1:02:20

chatter, chatter, human drama, human

1:02:22

noise, inane human noise, right?

1:02:26

Then the birds start creeping in bit by

1:02:28

bit, you've got the thud of a bird

1:02:31

hitting Annie's door, you've got one

1:02:33

bird swooping down and attacking

1:02:36

Melanie on the boat and it's just

1:02:38

like the odd little random kind of

1:02:40

punctuation points and it slowly builds

1:02:42

to these cacophonies of, you know, the noisiest

1:02:45

section, I suppose, is that middle section where

1:02:48

they're in the diner, where the attacks are

1:02:50

happening, the explosions, the birds, all the

1:02:52

townspeople yelling at each other and then

1:02:54

you're right, suddenly everything goes

1:02:57

silent. You put it perfectly, it's like

1:02:59

post-verbal by that final act, right? Dialogue

1:03:01

has just fallen away and all we

1:03:03

hear are birds and ambient noise. That's

1:03:05

almost the scariest thing about the end

1:03:07

of this film is that there's nothing

1:03:09

left to say. Yes, yes. There's just

1:03:11

nothing left to say. It's like,

1:03:14

what do we do? Like, you know, there's

1:03:16

no plans to hatch, there's no, you know,

1:03:19

there's just nothing left to say in the face

1:03:21

of the enormity of what has happened. And

1:03:24

it is this sort of kind of

1:03:26

humble moment, you know, in

1:03:28

the face of nature, like we're out,

1:03:30

like we've lost, like we're done, there's

1:03:32

no way that we can talk ourselves

1:03:34

out of this. Mm-hmm, yeah.

1:03:36

And I think that that's the horror of

1:03:39

the film, is that the words don't work anymore.

1:03:41

Yeah, that's so interesting. I watched it with a,

1:03:43

I hosted a screening of it here in the

1:03:45

UK last year and there were quite a few

1:03:47

young people in the audience and people that had

1:03:50

seen it before and some people that had never

1:03:52

seen it and I remember feeling kind of almost

1:03:54

slightly tense during that first

1:03:56

act, being like, I hope people

1:03:58

aren't getting bored or getting wet. restless and

1:04:00

I don't think they were but there were

1:04:02

laughs and there were moments of you know

1:04:04

people muttering things throughout in that first act

1:04:06

and then I remember by that last act

1:04:09

you could hear a pin drop in that

1:04:11

cinema like everyone was just so completely immersed

1:04:13

when we're just in that house and we're

1:04:15

just like waiting for something to happen you

1:04:17

know and it is it's it's genius the

1:04:19

way that the film is put together. I

1:04:21

had the same experience teaching it to undergraduates

1:04:23

you know a lifetime ago when I used

1:04:25

to teach at university and there was sort

1:04:27

of this eye roll you know this is

1:04:29

sort of hokey naff old movie and

1:04:33

then yeah just somewhere in there and it's very it

1:04:36

comes in very slowly but every single

1:04:38

time by the time you get to

1:04:40

that final act it's absolutely silent like

1:04:43

it's absolutely like gripped

1:04:45

and I think it is that that really

1:04:47

it does happen on a much more sensory

1:04:50

level rather than a narrative one you

1:04:53

know I think that the lack of music

1:04:55

you know the kind of it's that kind

1:04:57

of paradoxical that you know the silence is

1:04:59

deafening. Yes, yes completely agree.

1:05:01

It's it's it's really like you're overwhelmed by

1:05:03

the lack of music you're overwhelmed by the

1:05:05

lack of conversation and

1:05:08

it's that absence it's that gap it's that

1:05:10

void which is where the terror comes from

1:05:12

right? Absolutely it's the it's the gaps

1:05:14

that the birds themselves seem to leave too like

1:05:16

they choose their moments to attack and then they

1:05:18

retreat right and so you're just constantly going when

1:05:21

is it going to happen again right it is

1:05:23

it's so clever and the birds themselves you know

1:05:25

as in like the effects we haven't really spoken

1:05:27

about but again like how do you find that

1:05:30

kind of stuff holds up he had this mix

1:05:32

of working with real birds of course and then

1:05:34

there were kind of sort of

1:05:36

visual effects kind of optical effects and

1:05:38

you know models and all kinds of

1:05:40

he he used all kinds of tricks

1:05:43

didn't he to kind of put the birds on screen right

1:05:45

it's pretty I mean it's funny when I you know

1:05:47

I think the first few times that I saw this

1:05:49

film when I was younger you know you kind of

1:05:51

experience it as the birds but yeah the more familiar

1:05:53

with the film you get the more that I find

1:05:55

that I kind of marvel at the craft yeah so

1:05:57

you know that scene that we keep coming back to

1:06:00

with Melanie, like I don't really read that

1:06:02

scene as Melanie is

1:06:04

being attacked by the birds anymore. Like I do when I

1:06:06

watch that, I tend to kind of look at it and

1:06:08

it's like I look at what Tippi Hedren is going through

1:06:10

as a human being with the job

1:06:13

of acting in this film. But it's also

1:06:15

the birds, you know, it's like what, you know, you kind

1:06:17

of look at them closely and you try, it's almost like,

1:06:19

you know, trying

1:06:21

to see the seams, like, you know, which of the

1:06:23

birds that had the little rubber caps over their mouths,

1:06:25

you know, which that, you know, what are they throwing

1:06:27

at this woman? And that kind of that that

1:06:30

sort of patchwork approach to

1:06:33

to the effects, you know, bringing together all of these

1:06:35

different kinds of birds, bird

1:06:37

effects, I think is really, again, like just

1:06:40

so ahead of its time. It

1:06:42

really should have, you know, that it didn't win the Oscar

1:06:44

for optical effects is insane. Like,

1:06:46

it's just insane. And I think it's because

1:06:49

there wasn't at that particular moment, you know,

1:06:51

people were excited about the crowd shots in

1:06:53

Cleopatra, which is great. You

1:06:55

know, they're amazing. But that's what people were

1:06:57

thinking in terms of optical effects. They weren't

1:06:59

sort of primed to they

1:07:02

weren't really primed to recognize the artistry that

1:07:04

went into something like the birds. So I

1:07:06

do think it was way ahead of its

1:07:08

time in that sense. Yeah, I

1:07:11

agree. I agree. And I think it's

1:07:13

that brilliant thing, too, of, you

1:07:15

know, using loads of different techniques.

1:07:17

And so therefore you never quite

1:07:20

you never quite expect what it's going to

1:07:22

be, you know, like it was kind of,

1:07:24

you know, people talk about this, these kind

1:07:26

of examples all the time, but Jurassic Park,

1:07:28

that it wasn't just CGI that they were

1:07:30

utilizing. There were also models, there were also

1:07:32

animatronics, there were also puppetry, you know, and

1:07:34

it changes almost every few frames sometimes within

1:07:36

a scene, you know, and that's what tricks

1:07:38

the eye into thinking this kind of stuff

1:07:40

looks real. And I think it's the same with this, right?

1:07:43

It's not just models,

1:07:45

it's not just the optical effects, you know,

1:07:47

it's like a bizarre, very

1:07:49

well edited mix of everything, right? And

1:07:51

again, it is kind of nightmarish in

1:07:54

that regard. I think that scene where

1:07:56

the birds coming through the chimney is

1:07:58

like a really powerful of

1:08:00

that because that's just birds. I

1:08:02

think you might know more about

1:08:04

this than I do, but I think they had

1:08:06

the set in a cage. So

1:08:09

the whole thing was shot in a giant

1:08:11

bird cage. So they were real birds that

1:08:13

they plugged into the room. And

1:08:16

I think it's that thing that when you can recognize real

1:08:18

birds in one moment, you take

1:08:21

that verisimilitude or that authenticity

1:08:23

to other moments where it's

1:08:25

not real birds. So I think that there's a bleeding of

1:08:27

reality. A

1:08:31

really intuitive understanding of how the

1:08:33

brain works, I think, when it

1:08:35

comes to bringing this to life.

1:08:37

Also, anyone who's had just a

1:08:40

single bird fly into their house

1:08:42

accidentally knows what a panic-inducing kind

1:08:44

of chaos that is, right? Everyone

1:08:46

panics, the bird panics, all the

1:08:48

people panic. You're just desperately trying

1:08:50

to get this bird out. And

1:08:52

it's chaotic, and just the idea of having

1:08:56

that many on a film set.

1:09:01

Now comes the part of the episode where I thank our

1:09:03

next 30 Kickstarter backers

1:09:06

for helping us to fund Final Cut,

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the official evolution of horror card game.

1:09:10

Oh my God, it's been a very

1:09:12

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and I have been busy signing thank

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speak. In fact, some of you may

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newsletter. Head to evolutionofhorror.com/newsletter. That's

1:10:55

evolutionofhorror.com/newsletter. Alex,

1:11:00

I think we need to

1:11:03

talk about, you've mentioned it

1:11:05

a couple of times already

1:11:07

but I

1:11:17

just want to go back to that

1:11:19

scene, the school scene.

1:11:22

I think it is not

1:11:24

just one of the best scenes in this

1:11:26

movie, I think it is one of the

1:11:28

best scenes Hitchcock ever directed. I think it's

1:11:30

one of the greatest scenes of suspense of

1:11:32

all time basically. I really would, I would

1:11:34

be that hyperbolic about it. We

1:11:37

are of course talking about that incredible set piece where

1:11:40

Melanie Tippey-Hedron's character, she's waiting outside the

1:11:42

school to meet Annie, Haywood and pick

1:11:44

up Kathy I believe. And

1:11:47

she's sitting outside the school, there's like a

1:11:49

kind of jungle gym climbing frame behind her

1:11:51

and we get a couple of cutaways to

1:11:53

a couple of crows sat on that climbing

1:11:55

frame, right? And she kind of glances over

1:11:58

and sees a couple of birds. They're just

1:12:00

sitting there. And then she kind

1:12:02

of like, she's smoking a cigarette, the kids

1:12:04

are singing a nursery rhyme in the background.

1:12:06

And then we see a couple more birds

1:12:08

land on the climbing frame and a couple

1:12:10

more and a couple more. And the scene

1:12:12

really plays out in quite a lengthy period

1:12:14

of time, right? As slowly

1:12:17

more and more of these

1:12:19

terrifying black crows emerge until

1:12:22

that stunning reveal where

1:12:24

Melanie watches one bird fly towards

1:12:26

the climbing frame, the camera follows

1:12:29

it. And as it

1:12:31

lands, we see that there are

1:12:33

like a thousand birds on this

1:12:35

jungle gym just waiting for school

1:12:37

to finish and so that they

1:12:39

can begin their attack on these

1:12:41

innocent children. And it is, I

1:12:44

mean, what is it that makes it such

1:12:47

a perfect scene, do you think? I

1:12:49

totally agree. It's like it's just a masterclass, right? Like

1:12:51

it's up there for me with like the shower scene.

1:12:53

It's that perfect. You know, that

1:12:56

it's the right length. There's

1:12:59

something about the time and the rhythm of that

1:13:01

sequence. And I think that

1:13:03

that was something that Hitchcock was very intuitive about,

1:13:06

especially working with his collaborators. They really

1:13:09

understood the rhythm of these

1:13:11

things in a very kind of foundational

1:13:13

way. And,

1:13:15

you know, I think it's that. It's,

1:13:18

you know, that it has the right beats. It's

1:13:20

a simple set up. It's like the shower scene. It's

1:13:22

a simple set up. So it's

1:13:24

not this sort of narratively complex thing

1:13:27

that you need to think about. You're not thinking

1:13:29

about character development. You're not thinking about plot. You're

1:13:31

totally immersed in the moment. And

1:13:33

again, I think it's about as much as of

1:13:35

what they don't do as much

1:13:38

as they do. So the lack of

1:13:40

music, you know, it's almost

1:13:42

like the flip side of the shower scene where Hitchcock

1:13:44

initially didn't want the shower scene to have music. And,

1:13:47

you know, Bernard Herman, quite famously, was like, this is what

1:13:49

we're going to do. And and

1:13:52

it's almost like the birds. That scene is almost

1:13:54

like Hitchcock going back to that idea of

1:13:56

having a kind of moment like that without sound, like what

1:13:58

happens when we don't have music. gains

1:34:01

access to Mitch's San Francisco

1:34:03

address. Upon learning that

1:34:05

he's gone away for the weekend to

1:34:08

his family's farm in Bodega Bay, she

1:34:11

drives up to the small village

1:34:13

in her Aston Martin to personally

1:34:15

deliver the lovebirds. Traditional

1:34:17

gender roles are reversed here.

1:34:20

Melanie plays the part of

1:34:22

the hunter, eagle-eyed, calmly

1:34:25

tracking her target, determinedly

1:34:28

pursuing it. She

1:34:31

zooms in with a laser focus

1:34:33

on what she wants. There's

1:34:35

a close-up shot of the

1:34:38

lovebirds inside Melanie's convertible. They

1:34:40

take on the function of the

1:34:42

erotic drive, absorbing Melanie's

1:34:45

aura as a dangerous gutter

1:34:47

snipe. Her surprise

1:34:49

arrival into this small California

1:34:51

town could be read as

1:34:53

the first bird attack of

1:34:56

the film because she's a

1:34:58

powerful force of nature that

1:35:00

unsettles the location's mundane daily

1:35:02

routine. The term

1:35:04

bird in British slang refers to

1:35:07

a female love interest or attractive

1:35:09

woman, a connection that

1:35:11

would not have been lost on

1:35:14

Hitchcock. Melanie rents

1:35:16

a boat and crosses the bay

1:35:18

to discreetly leave the lovebirds at

1:35:20

the Brenner family farm. Mitch

1:35:24

spots her as she leaves. He drives

1:35:26

his car to meet her at the

1:35:28

dock. I find it

1:35:30

symbolically so interesting that topographically,

1:35:33

Melanie's image is immersed in

1:35:35

the calm waters of the

1:35:37

bay. She gracefully

1:35:39

steers the boat and navigates

1:35:41

her way across and back.

1:35:45

Mitch, however, opts to drive

1:35:47

around the bay, avoiding direct

1:35:49

contact with the water. The

1:35:52

natural realm of the bay

1:35:54

reflects a womanly condition, wetness

1:35:58

being the cornerstone of viewed

1:44:00

with dread because she topples

1:44:02

the house of cards of

1:44:04

masculinity, exposing the false dominance

1:44:06

of men at the center

1:44:08

of eroticism. If

1:44:10

you're interested to learn more about

1:44:13

feminine jivisense, stay tuned

1:44:15

for the publication of my book

1:44:17

in which I developed my theory

1:44:20

around this concept. Until

1:44:22

next time. A

1:44:27

big thank you to the brilliant Mary Wild. It's so

1:44:29

good to have her back. And don't forget, if you

1:44:31

want to hear more of Mary's content, sign up to

1:44:34

her Patreon, patreon.com/Mary

1:44:36

Wild. So

1:44:38

Alex, I want to talk a little bit about kind

1:44:41

of the legacy of the birds

1:44:43

before we wrap up. You know, we mentioned earlier,

1:44:45

this is arguably one

1:44:47

of his most ambitious movies by

1:44:50

this point, right? When

1:44:52

you look at what comes after the

1:44:55

birds in that kind of

1:44:57

final stretch of Hitchcock's career,

1:44:59

you know, Marnie, Family Plot,

1:45:01

Topaz, Frenzy, etc. What

1:45:04

are your thoughts? Is the

1:45:06

birds the last truly great

1:45:08

movie Hitchcock ever made? A

1:45:10

lot of people really fight for

1:45:12

a lot of those later films. Maybe

1:45:15

it's just because I grew up with this sort of golden age

1:45:17

of Hitchcock. I just never really

1:45:19

bought it as much. So I'm very much at

1:45:21

the school that this is the last great. I

1:45:23

mean, I think that there's some really interesting work

1:45:26

that he did after. But none of it seems to hit

1:45:28

that hit stride. And I think, you

1:45:30

know, to give him the credit, I think that

1:45:33

all of those later films, Frenzy is one I

1:45:36

think that's really, really important that doesn't get talked

1:45:38

about as much. It's

1:45:40

really disturbing. It's a really upset film, right?

1:45:42

But I think that we see him

1:45:44

trying to do what he was doing with Psycho and

1:45:46

the Birds and that he's trying to kind of keep

1:45:48

moving forward. Yes. You know, I think

1:45:50

with the Birds, he manages to do it. I think with

1:45:52

these later films, they're a bit more hit and miss. But

1:45:55

I still think that that ambition is

1:45:57

there, that driving ambition to do something

1:45:59

different.