The Birds with Tippi Hedren

Alfred Hitchcock's Adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Short Story

Oct 10, 2009

Hitchcock's choices in adapting du Maurier's story give a tantalizing glimpse into the symbolic meaning of the bird attacks as well as into Hitchcock's own personality.

Hitchcock found success with a du Maurier novel early in his career in Rebecca. The studio required that he remain faithful to the novel to avoid alienating du Maurier's many fans. However, by the 1950's, Hitchcock's films were free of the demands of the studio system and when he adapted du Maurier's obscure short story "The Birds" in 1963, he deviated substantially from the original work, creating a classic Hitchcock vehicle for suspense and social commentary, and revealing glimpses into his own world in the process.

du Maurier's story, published in 1952, centered on a series of unexplained bird attacks. The main characters were confined inside their home, behind barricaded windows and doors, with the radio their only link to the outside world. du Maurier never revealed anything substantial about the characters themselves; her story was action, not character, driven. She also never identified the reason for the attacks. The reader simply experienced the family's terror as the birds killed their closest neighbors and threatened their own lives.

The most distinctive element of the story, aside from its intriguing premise, was its unveiled depiction of military siege mentality. The scenes inside the house were absolutely claustrophobic and the text of the story was littered with military phrases and references. Given that du Maurier lived in London during the World War II blitz, it certainly isn't unreasonable to assume a highly personal source for her material.

At the end of the story, the reader was left hanging. du Maurier never revealed whether her characters lived or died. She also never commented about what the bird attacks were meant to represent.

Even though Hitchcock employed screenwriters for his films, he always remained the primary creative force in development of the story. In this case, Hitchcock retained du Maurier's intermittent bird attacks, a shortened version of the siege on the house, and a vague ending to the story; he dispensed with virtually everything else. Unlike du Maurier's, his story was character driven, a typical Hitchcock love story, complete with a fascinating array of characters joined by less than healthy relationships complicated by a suspenseful twist.

In The Birds, each major character exhibits behavior preventing them from forming mutually beneficial, giving relationships. Woven into the story was a sense of desperate emotional isolation; an isolation that threatened to destroy these people from the inside, even as the birds threatened to destroy them from the outside. Hitchcock, like du Maurier, never gave a specific explanation for the bird attacks or revealed their symbolic meaning. It is possible, however, that the background for Hitchcock's own interpretation may be found in the events of his life at the time.

Just prior to this film, Hitchcock's daughter, with whom he had been particularly close, married and moved away. Hitchcock began to experience more competition in his professional life and his health also began to decline. His wife, Alma, an extremely successful editor with a strong personality, began to claim more power in their relationship, possibly causing friction between them.

What emerges is a Hitchcock facing new professional challenges while becoming estranged from his wife and daughter. Hitchcock experienced directly the emotional isolation that was becoming an unsettling component of American life in general at the time the film was produced.

Robin Wood, a noted Hitchcock analyst, once commented that the film made definitive links between isolation and the bird attacks. Each attack was immediately preceded by a scene which illustrated the emotional isolation of the characters. This was also represented in the casualties the birds inflicted. The three deaths shown as a direct result of the bird attacks were the farmer found alone in his bedroom; the traveling salesman killed beside his car; and Annie, the single school teacher, discovered on the steps of her cottage. For Hitchcock, the birds had a special significance to those who were alone.

Conclusion

Hitchcock may have selected the story based on his subconscious identification with its dramatic sense of isolation. His choices in adapting the story become a representation of his own life situation played out against the back ground of a growing trend in the lives of Americans in general.

Robin Wood wrote that Hitchcock once said the film was about "complacency." The Birds may project Hitchcock's realization of his naive complacency regarding the security of his own professional and personal life, and his warning that no one is safe from the ravages of emotional isolation.

Sources

Cohen, Paula Marantz. Alfred Hitchcock: The Legacy of Victorianism. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1995.

du Maurier, Daphne. "The Birds." Echoes of the Macabre: Selected Stories. Garden City: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1952.

Fried, Debra. "Love, American Style: Hitchcock's Hollywood." Framing Hitchcock. Eds. Sidney Gottlieb and Christopher Brookhouse. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002.

Hunter, Evan. The Birds. Directed and Produced by Alfred Hitchcock. Released by Universal Pictures, 1963.

Silet, Charles L.P. "Writing for Hitch: An Interview with Evan Hunter." Framing Hitchcock. Eds. Sidney Gottlieb and Christopher Brookhouse. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002.

Wood, Robin. Hitchcock's Films Revisited. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.

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