Swarms of birds attack. The world is threatened. We’re all in danger. Yet, in the midst of a crisis that everyone is faced with, there are issues that individual families are faced with, either because of the birds or not. In Alfred Hitchcock’s film, "The Birds," the director takes the short story of the same name by Daphne du Maurier and expands upon it by adding more depth to the problems that put a strain on the familial relationships, all while facing the feathered terror.
The last thing that anyone wants to feel is isolated and abandoned, especially in a time of uncertainty; but that’s precisely what Hitchcock does to a few of his film’s main characters, especially Lydia Brenner. With her feeling of being intruded upon by her son Mitch’s new love interest, Melanie Daniels, Lydia’s world quickly and emotionally becomes unraveled.
A majority of film adaptations don’t include everything that’s in the source material. According to the essay Adaptation in Reverse: "The 'Queer Modernism' of 'The Birds'" (1963) by Richard Allen, the author states, “Hitchcock’s The Birds is ‘an adaptation is reverse’ which adds to the source material the novelistic details of the romance narrative and melodrama of the family, of procreativity, in order to expose the conventional ‘fictive’ nature of the story,” (Allen, 322). The Birds expands considerably upon the issue of family dynamics that the short story only subtly touches upon, including the issues of isolation and abandonment that intertwines with those dynamics. This is clear in the scene with Melanie bringing tea into Lydia’s bedroom, and the long talk that follows. Here, Hitchcock uses elements of mise-en-scene such as set design, character positioning and certain shot compositions to emphasize the issues at hand.
At the start of the scene, Melanie knocks on the bedroom door, and Lydia automatically thinks it’s Mitch. This here shows how much Lydia is used to having Mitch around to assist her. She didn’t even consider that it might be Melanie. Lydia begins to reveal to Melanie why she is the way she is with Mitch. Lydia says, “I wish I were a stronger person…It’s terrible how you depend on somebody for strength, and then suddenly, all the strength is gone and you’re alone.” Lydia is shown in a high-angle close-up while talking, which makes her seem small and vulnerable. It’s ironic how Lydia is fearful of being alone and abandoned, when Melanie clearly wants to help her out to make sure that she gets better. Lydia then starts to talk about her deceased husband Frank, and therefore beginning to reveal her weakness. “He understood the children…He had the knack of entering into their world and becoming part of them. That’s a very rare talent. I wish I could be like that.” As Lydia is describing her husband she is framed again in a high-angle close-up, making her appear weak and frail. Lydia feels disconnected from her children now that her husband is gone. She doesn’t feel as though she can measure up to the children’s expectations of being a mother and filling the void that the death of the father has left.
As Lydia is talking at one point, Melanie is positioned at the mantelpiece on another side of the room. There are pictures of a baby on the mantel, presumably of Mitch. There aren’t any pictures of Lydia’s children near her bed, as we could see. Having Melanie positioned closer to photos of Mitch helps to illuminate Lydia’s feeling that Melanie is growing closer to him as Lydia is growing further apart from him. It seems like every time Melanie tries to get a good look at the photos, Lydia starts to talk again, in a likely attempt to draw Melanie’s attention away from Mitch. If you look at Melanie’s hand resting on the mantelpiece, it looks like a claw trying to reach for the photo. Her red nail polish gives her a small comparison to the birds when they have blood on their talons and beaks, similar to the scene later on when they attack Mitch as he tries to shut one of the windows. The birds have taken away what’s normal to the citizens of Bodega Bay, and Lydia feels as though Melanie is trying to take away what’s normal to her. The emotional pain becomes too much for Lydia and she breaks down in front of Melanie: “Mitch has always done exactly what he wanted to do. But you see, I don’t want to be left alone. I don’t think I could bear to be left alone…I don’t know what I’d do if Mitch weren’t here. I wish I was stronger.” Lydia seems to have a reverse mentality of a mother bird. Usually, if a human touches a bird’s egg, the mother will abandon it. But in this case, it’s the mother who’s at risk of being abandoned, since a force from outside the family has touched upon her son.
According to Robert Stam’s essay "Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation," the author states, “The question of fidelity ignores the wider question: Fidelity to what? Is the filmmaker to be faithful to the plot in its every detail? That might mean a thirty-hour version of War and Peace. Virtually, all filmmakers condense the events of the novels being adapted,” (Stam, 57). In Hitchcock’s adaptation, he isn’t entirely truthful to the source material, because he had to make a story lengthy enough to fit the big screen. He had to expand upon the short story, in order to not end up with a movie only having a running time of 45 minutes. Hitchcock had to do the opposite of most filmmakers. While keeping the same general idea of du Maurier’s story, Hitchcock added completely new characters, and went more in depth with familial situations in the midst of a crisis.
Hitchcock had to do this in another scene that focuses on the fear of abandonment and isolation in which Lydia shouts at Mitch in the living room. This portion of the film is also significant because it brings into question Mitch’s ability to assume the role of “man of the house” and protector of his family. He has these responsibilities put upon him, and he’s isolated in the sense that he’s the one that everyone in his family comes to depend on, since he’s the only man in the household. The viewer is forced to look back at the character of Nat in the short story, and if he has what it takes to take care of his family, because of his injury from the war. At the start of the story, du Maurier writes, “Nat Hocken, because of a war-time disability, had a pension and did not work full-time at the farm. He worked three days a week, and they gave him the lighter jobs: hedging, thatching, repairs to the farm buildings. Although he was married, with children, his was a solitary disposition; he liked to work best alone,” (du Maurier, 153). When most people would like to work with others, he prefers to be alone, to be isolated with his work. To make up for having his work schedule cut short due to an injury, he probably gets fulfillment for completing his tasks alone. He does everything he can to protect his family, to show them that his injury has not completely crippled him.
Mitch’s character in "The Birds" is the cinematic equivalent to Nat. Instead of a war injury, however, it’s the task that his mother places on him to match his father’s dependability. In this living room scene, we see the loneliness of Mitch and Lydia. As to Lydia’s isolation, at one point in this scene, she is positioned on the right side of the frame, while Melanie, Cathy and Mitch are positioned on the left side. She is constantly asking him questions concerning their safety, to which he only gives ambiguous answers, such as, “I don’t know,” or “We’ll just see what happens.” When Lydia loses her patience, she storms over to Mitch and yells, “You don’t know! When will you know? When we’re all dead! If only your father were here.” As she’s shouting at Mitch, Lydia is seen in an extreme close-up, making her more in-your-face and the viewer can feel the full effect of her rage. Lydia always counted on her husband to protect her and her children. Now that he’s gone, she looks to Mitch to fill that void; but she feels abandoned since Mitch doesn’t seem to be doing as good a job as she had hoped. In the short story, Nat’s wife also asks him many questions about the situation, but Nat isn’t able to provide any definite answers either: “‘Won’t America do something?’ said his wife. ‘They’ve always been our allies, haven’t they? Surely America will do something?’” Both Nat and Mitch feel isolated as they are the ones that everyone else relies on. In the essay, Adaptation by Dudley Andrew, the author states, “In the history of the arts, surely ‘borrowing’ is the most frequently used mode of adaptation. Here the artist employs, more or less extensively, the material, idea, or form of an earlier, generally successful, text,” (Andrew, 30). The term “borrowing” very well relates to Hitchcock’s adaptation, because he didn’t necessarily make a film entirely based on the film. He just used the overall idea of it, which is the mysterious bird attacks. The short story mainly focuses on the father, Nat, trying to protect his family, with the themes of the story being inserted more subtly. But in Hitchcock’s film, some of the themes are more visible, and allow the viewer to draw connections from the narrative’s messages to the actions of the characters.
Another scene that expands upon familial issues of abandonment is when Melanie, Cathy, Mitch and Lydia are sitting together in the living room quietly as Mitch is finishing with boarding up the house. Hitchcock makes greatly noticeable use of character positioning and a minimal amount of dialogue. Lydia is sitting alone in a corner, while Melanie and Cathy are sitting together on the couch and Mitch is making sure the house is completely closed off. Cathy asks Mitch why are the birds attacking, to which he replies that he doesn’t know. With Cathy confiding in Mitch for answers and going to Melanie for comfort, Lydia doesn’t feel wanted. So Lydia goes ahead and does a remedial task that feels normal to here in order to feel the least bit helpful, even if she can’t feel as such towards her children. There isn’t any dialogue or sound as she does this. The three others just sit and watch her quietly. The lack of sound reflects the emptiness that Lydia is experiencing.
Later in this scene, Cathy starts to feel ill, and Melanie follows her to the bathroom. This then cuts to Lydia, who is framed in a Dutch high-angle close-up. This angle expresses that this isn’t a normal situation for Lydia. Before Melanie came along, Cathy would most likely go to her mother for help. But now she has Melanie, and Lydia feels unneeded. When the camera is on Lydia, you see her about to get up and help Cathy, out of motherly instinct. But as she sits back down again, we hear the bathroom door close. This is symbolic in Lydia feeling that she is being shut out of her children’s lives and replaced by Melanie. The camera is on Lydia as she listens to Cathy coughing in the bathroom, but doesn’t feel as though she can help in anyway. Her age difference is significant amongst the main characters, and can make her feel like an outcast as well. She is the only elderly person in the group, and she doesn’t feel like she can be as attentive a mother as she used to be, so Cathy goes to Melanie. Melanie and Mitch are both old enough to be Cathy’s parents; whereas Lydia is old enough to pass for Cathy’s grandmother.
Hitchcock was given the task to make a film that expanded on family dynamics and the terror of the birds. Through the use of certain mise-en-scene elements and shot compositions, he masterfully conveyed the sense of isolation and fear of abandonment in his characters. In cinematically creating the horror of du Maurier’s story, Hitchcock established an atmosphere of a huge crisis, but had his characters feel small and vulnerable, yet complex.
Works Cited
Du Maurier, Daphne. “The Birds.” Classics of the Macabre. Michael Foreman. New York: Doubleday, 1987. 153-192.
Andrew, Dudley. “Adaptation.” Film Adaptation. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000. 28-37.
Stam, Robert. “Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation.” Film Adaptation. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000. 54-76.
Allen, Richard. “Adaptation in Reverse: The ‘Queer Modernism of The Birds (1963).” A Companion to Literature and Film. Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 319-323.
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