what is it you most fear?

Rating: 10/10 (28 March 2011)

Daphne Du Maurier's work largely falls into he category of 'gothic romance' - not the kind that has glutted supermarkets since the '50s, her best known books really hark back to the genre's roots in the 19th century. Her short story, "The Birds," is something of an anomaly in her work - on the surface its a sci-fi/disaster story that ends grimly (the farmer's family is pretty much doomed); but it is also clearly an expressive allegory for what it must have felt like for many British during the Battle of Britain - the description of an army of seagulls appearing on the horizon could easily be that of a fleet of German bombers. The giveaway line comes from the farmer's wife when she remarks that "surely the Americans will do something." Of course they did, and they and the British went on to defeat the Germans, which makes the post-war publication of the story a little out of date.
Hitchccock had gotten one of his most successful films from Du Maurier's work - Rebecca - as well as one of his least successful, Under Capricorn. Deciding to take one of her most popular but least typical short stories as source for The Birds may have involved some risk - especially considering what he added to the original material. Obviously there was no longer any purpose served in evoking the Battle of Britain, so the location of the film is moved to America. The birds of the film then take on an entirely different quality - they become what can be called 'an open metaphor' meaning that they can be interpreted in any number of ways. To one asking "why are they attacking humans en masse?" the proper response is "what is it you most fear? that's what they will represent to you." Hitchcock does provide us with a key to his own interpretation, by adding a clinging mother to the family unit. Hitchcock, for better or worse, is the most overtly Freudian of directors - as the birds gather in the background preparing their assault, the central players quietly dance around the problem of the lead female's sexual attraction to a man whom his mother has effectively neutered. Only the sudden onslaught of the birds allows him the moment to reclaim his status as head of the family, and by that time his would-be lover has been severely damaged. Anyone who knows Hitchcock's body of work will recognize how this resonates with themes of sexuality and fear in his other films.
But, again the birds are an open metaphor - Hitchcock is clever enough not to bind their threat too tightly to his own paranoias here. We are free to interpret them as we please, and to read the domestic drama as mere back-story to their unpredictable attacks. The film's suspense thus hinges, not on our concern for the family's problems, but on our own fears of inexplicable and sudden catastrophe. I think the effort to achieve that is entirely successful, and this is one of Hitchcock's most unsettling, and most memorable, accomplishments.