'The Birds': It's all about women at the end of the day

Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) is an extremely strange movie.

It's half character study and half horror film. It is nominally about an unexplained siege of a coastal town by raging crows, seagulls and sparrows -- but what it seems to really be about is repressed female sexuality.

I have a theory which may not be entirely smart or remotely accurate, but I will pontificate on it anyway.

'Birds' was British slang for girls (perhaps derived from 'chicks', who knows). I think Hitchcock knew exactly what he was going with that title.

Also, in his legendary sit-down interviews with French filmmaker Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock straight-up said that the movie was entirely about the three main female characters played by Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette and 'Tippi' Hedren in her first movie role.

'Tippi' Hedren in The Birds

Coming on the heels of one of his biggest hits, Psycho, Hitchcock was probably under pressure to continue his winning streak and while The Birds was a hit, I don't know that its reputation is as strong as some of his more highbrow efforts like Rear Window and Vertigo.

It's understandable that some audiences aren't immediately charmed by The Birds.

So much of it looks artificial, the first two thirds is very talky and when the birds finally do arrive the relentless squawking can be grating. But if you look below the surface there's some pretty fascinating stuff afoot.

The three women the film revolves around are intriguing because of their barely hidden eccentricities.

There's 'Tippi' Hedren's lead character Melanie Daniels, a woman who brazenly pursues a man named Mitch (played by the dashing Rod Taylor) she just met, even taking a rickety speedboat across a bay just to engage in some innocuous flirtation.

She eventually encounters Pleshette's character, a woman who was once jilted by Taylor's leading man and still moved to be near him anyway. Their exchanges, always seemingly pleasant, actually have a hostile undercurrent which is fascinating to watch.

Finally, there's Mitch's wildly overprotective mother played by the great Jessica Tandy, who literally looks at Hedren with terror every time she sees her. She immediately sizes her up as a slut ("a girl like that" is the tasteful way she diminishes her) and makes no secret of the fact that she doesn't approve of her son dating her.

Rod Taylor in The Birds

The film interrupts their three-way battle for the affections and attention of Mitch with the high-pitched assault of murderous creatures swooping in from above. I assume their ferocity is meant to represent the barely submerged contempt each of these women feel towards each other.

Much has been made of the so-called Hitchcock blonde, their supposed icy perfection that the director will inevitably turn upside down through some torturous plot device. I am, however, not convinced that the filmmaker had such an inherently nasty disposition towards women.

Certainly his films tend to have a sort of conventional Hollywood sexism that can be dated at best. The women are usually victims in his films, and this one is no different, all of them seem to look to Mitch to save them and give them direction when disaster strikes.

Still, he doesn't cast women to be merely eye candy. Janet Leigh, Kim Novak, Grace Kelly et. al. have a lot of complexity and more agency than in most traditional films of their period.

The Melanie Daniels figure in particular is an intriguing one because she is not especially likable. Hedren had a far more haughty bearing than previous Hitchcock heroines, which comes off as more modern today than it probably did fifty years ago.

That a woman like this would literally strike fear into the hearts of a California coastal community is relatively unthinkable now, but in 1963 it was an acceptable conceit. So in that way the film is a glorious pre-women's lib time capsule.

The scene where a local woman grows hysterical and blames Hedren's character for somehow bringing the plague of bird attacks upon their town probably plays campy today but it was wholly serious in '63 which is kind of incredible.

Today, this movie is, rightfully so, remembered for establishing the seemingly banal "creature feature" - the idea that a shark or some other part of nature will suddenly strike without warning. But it also had some pointed commentary on the state of male-female relationships that is worth revisiting.

I love how Hitchcock movies always present rewards for repeat watchers. I guess that's why they call him the Master.