Alfred Hitchcocks nature thriller The Birds has one of the most iconic and unsettling ambiguous endings of all time. Why did the birds suddenly stop?
With The Birds ending explained, the deeper themes and meaning of Alfred Hitchcocks chilling thriller become clear and, once they are, so does the movies reputation as a classic by one of the most influential directors in history. Loosely adapted from the 1952 short story of the same name by Daphne du Maurier, the 1963 masterpiece takes place in the seaside town of Bodega Bay, where things take a sinister turn when the local bird population starts swooping down to attack people. Screenwriter Evan Hunter took the premise of unexplained bird attacks from du Mauriers source material but invented new complex characters and a twistier plot, which brought different themes to the table.
Hot off one of the biggest hits of his career with the pioneering slasher Psycho, Hitchcock set his sights on a different horror subgenre with The Birds. This movie brought the natural thriller into the mainstream, paving the way for movies like Jaws and Arachnophobia. The Birds scary attack sequences earned it a nomination for Best Special Effects at the 36th Academy Awards. The Birds final scene in which the birds mysteriously stop their attacks is utterly unnerving, and its left open to interpretation. This was a deliberate decision on Hitchcocks part, and with The Birds ending explained, its easy to see why it worked so well.
The suspenseful masterpiece by Alfred Hitchcock is terrifying because it withholds certain answers from the viewer. By.
There are suggestions of an answer. According to one character, the birds are attacking people in retaliation for how people have handled the environment and all the birds we’ve eaten. That’s not really enough, though, and even though it is a great explanation on a thematic level, there’s still a visceral missing, and The Birds is made creepy and great by this absence of any kind of closure or clear explanation that viewers can grasp. As viewers, we are just as knowledgeable as the characters we are seeing. Their terror and confusion is our terror and confusion. The Birds would be a far less impactful film if it concluded with Melanie and Mitch reaching safety, a sign that the bird attacks had ceased, or with them learning why the birds were attacking.
The Birds knows this well, and it won’t give audiences a cozy place to let their fears come to rest. That’s an intriguing, unremarkable explanation, but isn’t there something scarier about the not knowing? Looking up at the sky, or at the birds flying around that you take for granted every day, and having no idea when, why, or what might drive them to attack? The birds are merely acting in this way for unknown purposes and unknown motivations. Theres nothing scarier.
The movie doesn’t say, nor does it explain why the birds are attacking in the first place. Do they manage to get to safety? Do the birds continue attacking? Is this just a string of incidents in Northern California or the beginning of the end of the world?
Ending explained. This two-word phrase appears in a lot of headlines following the release of a big blockbuster. Since readers often want to know the “ending explained” more than anything else, this website has published a fair number of these types of stories. However, not all movies endings can be explained. Some scenes don’t need to be explained, and the filmmakers purposefully leave out the answers to many of the questions that viewers have after the credits roll. Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, a masterwork of suspense and disaster cinema that masterfully deprives viewers of any consoling explanation or resolution, is arguably one of the best of these films. In fact, The Birds barely has an ending. The movie just stops. For this, it is incredible.
Why Did The Birds Attack?
In The Birds, the birds don’t appear to have a specific purpose when they begin to dive down and attack the people living in Bodega Bay. A major factor in the terrifying quality of this classic Hitchcock film The Birds is the mysterious nature of the attacks by the film’s titular birds. But Hitchcock provided a concrete reason for the attacks. To mark the 35th anniversary of the film, Camille Paglia penned a book about The Birds for the British Film Institute in 1998. Paglia cites Hitchcock to explain the birds’ motivation for attacking: they were seeking retribution on humans for mistreating the natural world.
Over time, this interpretation of nature taking revenge on humanity has only become more and more pertinent. Climate change is one way that nature has retaliated against human activity that continues to deplete the planet’s natural resources through killing animals, drilling for oil, and destroying rainforests. In the early 20th century, the march of industry was heralded as a major innovation, but all the factories were quickly polluting the air. After finally growing tired of the pollution, the bird-attacking assailants from The Birds descended from the sky to mutilate those who were in charge.
What Do The Birds Represent?
The titular birds in The Birds are symbolic of a variety of ideas. They represent a confusing, nebulous, and vague threat to humanity that could represent a variety of genuine human anxieties and insecurities. The birds could represent post-World War II fears about the government’s inability to protect its citizens, given the timing of the film. The military is reportedly considering intervening in the widespread bird attacks, according to the car radio, but this is many years after Hitchcock’s evil birds have killed people.
Since the word “bird” is slang for a woman in Britain, Camille Paglia uses the birds in her book as a metaphor for the primal power of sexuality, especially female sexuality. Melanie travels to Bodega Bay in hopes of pursuing a romantic relationship with Mitch, but instead she has to deal with his controlling mother, his ex-girlfriend, and a bunch of irate birds. In a broader sense, the birds might serve as a critique of the corrupt human race. They violently turn against humanity for no apparent reason; this could be because humanity tends to commit senseless acts of violence.
FAQ
What happened at the ending of the birds?
What is the message of the birds movie?
What happens at the end of the birds Daphne du Maurier?
Why doesn t the birds finish with the usual the end title?