Summary
As they run up the hill toward Annie’s house, they pass the school, which is covered with birds. Crows are perched on the jungle gym again, and they walk slowly and quietly past them. As they approach Annie’s house, they see a body through the fence on the steps in front of her house. Mitch tells Melanie to wait further away, and he runs up to the body. Melanie follows him to the fence, and screams when she realizes that it is Annie and she is likely dead. As Mitch is looking over her body, Melanie reminds him that they were looking for Cathy and she might also be hurt. Mitch looks around and sees Cathy looking through a window of the house and crying, and jumps up and opens the door. Cathy runs out and hugs him, and he walks her down to the side of the porch so that Cathy will not have to look at Annie’s body as they leave the house. Mitch lifts her over the fence, passing her to Melanie who takes her in her arms and holds her while she continues crying. Several crows are still perched on the roof of Annie’s house, and they caw loudly. Mitch looks at them angrily, then looks around on the ground, picks up a rock, and winds up his arm to throw it at the birds. Melanie yells at him not to throw it and touches his arm, and he stops and calms down. He drops the stone and strokes Cathy’s hair, and then walks slowly over to Annie’s body. He takes off his jacket and drapes it over Annie’s body, but Melanie tells him he should not leave her outside in front of the house, so he lifts her up. On screen we see Melanie and Cathy embracing outside the fence and looking away while we hear Mitch carry Annie’s body inside and put her down.
When Mitch comes back outside, he picks up Melanie’s purse and hands it to her, and starts walking with them back down the hill past the school. He pauses when he sees the schoolyard and jungle gym full of crows, but soon keeps walking and tells Cathy and Melanie to try to be quiet. They get to the car, which is a convertible with its top down, and Mitch quickly closes the roof as the girls get inside the car. He starts driving, and Cathy tells them what happened. She says that they heard the explosion downtown from Annie’s house and went outside to see what it was. Suddenly, the birds were everywhere, and Annie pushed Cathy back inside but the birds covered her, and she could not get back inside. Cathy repeats that Annie saved her by pushing her inside, and cries harder.
The next scene opens on the Brenner house with all of the windows covered by planks of wood. Mitch is on a ladder, adding some wood to the last window that needs to be boarded up, and Melanie stands at the bottom passing him wood. Out in the bay, hundreds of birds can be seen gathering out on the water and on shore. Melanie asks how long they have been gathering there, and Mitch tells her it has been about 15 minutes. He says it seems like a pattern: the birds attack, then leave, then start massing again somewhere. He notes that the town does not look so different, except for a little bit of smoke from the fire. He asks if she wants to try to call her father again, but she says she tried and the phones are all dead. He asks if the house still has power, and she tells him yes. Lydia calls from inside the house that she is getting something on the radio, and Mitch and Melanie go inside. They join Cathy and Lydia, who says that she thinks the station is coming from San Francisco, and all four of them listen in silence. The radio announcer describes the attack on the school in little detail and mentions that there are reports of another attack on the town but the details were “rather sketchy.” He then switches to talking about news coming from Washington D. C., and Mitch asks in frustration, “was that all?” and walks over to the fire. He says they will need to bring some more wood into the house for the fire, so that birds cannot come down the chimney. Lydia asks if Mitch boarded up the windows in the attic, and asks when he thinks the birds will come. She also says that if there are bigger birds than seagulls, they will be able to get into the house. He says there is nothing they can do about that and just have to take the chance. She tells him she thinks they should just leave, but he says that they cannot leave while the birds are massing outside. She asks him when they will leave, where they will go and what will happen when they run out of wood. His answers to each question is that he does not know, and Lydia screams at him, “you don’t know, you don’t know! When will you know? When we’re all dead?” Cathy screams at her to stop yelling, but Lydia does not stop until she catches herself saying, “if only your father were here.” She apologizes to Mitch, who tells her to make herself some coffee, and then goes outside with Melanie to get more wood.
Outside, a giant flock of birds flies away from Bodega Bay. Melanie asks where they are headed, Mitch tells her somewhere inland, and Melanie guesses Santa Rosa. He walks off to gather more wood, and she continues staring into the sky with a worried look. Inside the house, the women sit and wait while Mitch double checks all of the windows and doors. Cathy asks Mitch if they can bring the lovebirds into the living room with them, and Lydia says no because they are birds. Mitch agrees that they should leave them in the kitchen. He then walks into the kitchen to check the windows in there, and the lovebirds are shown sitting silently in their cage. Before leaving the room, he pauses and looks suspiciously at the lovebirds. Back in the living room, Cathy asks him why the birds are trying to kill people, but Mitch says he does not know. Lydia clears the coffee and tea off of the coffee table, and they all sit in the silence in the living room, looking around the room, waiting. Cathy starts breathing more heavily, tells Melanie that she is going to be sick, stands up, and rushes out of the room. Melanie follows her to help her. She can be heard coughing and retching from the other room while Lydia stares into the distance with a frightened expression.
Melanie and Cathy return, with Melanie holding a cloth to Cathy’s forehead, and they sit down on the couch. Flapping and cawing start outside the house, and begin building in volume as everyone in the room stands up and looks around nervously. Cathy lets go of Melanie and runs over to her mother, and Mitch throws more wood into the fire. Lydia and Cathy, still embracing, roam around the room trying to find a corner in which they feel safe, while Melanie waits nervously on the couch. The sound of smashing glass startles everyone, Mitch jumps up and runs to a window, pushes the drapes aside and finds a seagull trying to get in through a hole in the glass. He wrestles the bird, pushes it out of the window, closes the wooden shutters, and ties an electrical cord around them to make sure they do not blow open again. The birds peck at his hand while he does this, and he starts bleeding. A shot of the front door shows it starting to fall apart as birds peck through from the outside. Melanie, shocked and frightened, looks up (into a camera above her) and roams around the room, clinging to the wall. Once Mitch gets the window sealed, he finds Lydia and Cathy crouching in a corner and moves them to a comfortable chair. He goes to Melanie, who worries about his hand, and then sits her back down on the couch and goes to the kitchen to dress the wounds on his hand. No dialogue can be heard over the din of the birds.
When Mitch returns from the kitchen, he sees the front door nearly ruined, with holes in it growing bigger as birds peck from outside. He finds a large piece of furniture (foyer table and mirror) and puts it in front of the front door to prevent the birds from getting through. Melanie watches from down the hall as he nails it into place. When he walks back to the living room the lights in the house go out, so he runs into the kitchen and grabs a flashlight. The sound of splitting wood draws his and Melanie’s attention to a board on the side of the room that is being pecked from the outside. As Mitch searches for something to reinforce that board, the sounds of the birds start to dim, and he realizes that they are flying away.
In the next scene, a fire continues to burn in the fireplace as Lydia sleeps slumped over in her chair and Cathy sleeps on the couch. Melanie sits awake on the couch next to Cathy, and Mitch sleeps in a chair on the other side of the room. Melanie hears some intermittent flapping coming from inside the house and calls Mitch’s name but he does not stir. She takes the flashlight and goes to the lovebirds to see if they are making noise, but they sit still and silently as the flapping continues. She slowly walks up the stairs to the second floor, as the flapping continues intermittently in the background. She hesitates outside of a room before opening the door but eventually opens it and sticks her head in. She sees a hole in the ceiling, and the sky on the other side. She gasps, steps further into the room, and shines her light on the bed in the room. The bed is covered in birds, her light startles them, and they fly toward her. She backs away from them, causing the door to close behind her. She tries to hide her face and swats at the birds with the flashlight. The only sounds that can be heard are her gasps and the birds flapping their wings. A few birds get through her defenses, and she starts bleeding from her face and arms. She tries to open the door twice but falls against it, causing it to close. She slides down the door onto the ground, murmuring Mitch’s name. She mutters something barely audible about Cathy, faints, and falls down in front of the door. Mitch starts calling her name from outside the door and tries to open the door but has trouble because her body is blocking it. He finally gets through, with Lydia behind him, and they pull Melanie out while birds attack him. They slam the door shut, and it seems as though no birds got out of the room and into the rest of the house.
Mitch carries Melanie downstairs while Lydia leads the way. Mitch tells Lydia to get some bandages and antiseptic, and sends Cathy to get some brandy. He sets Melanie down on the couch, and we see that she has blood on her forehead and cheeks. She wakes up and begins wildly flailing her arms in front of her face as if the birds are still attacking her. Mitch grabs her arms and tells her it’s alright, and she eventually calms down. She stares into the distance with an empty expression, and a wider shot shows Cathy looking away from her in fear. Mitch feeds her some brandy, Lydia returns with bandages, and they clean her wounds. Mitch says that they need to get her to a hospital, but Lydia thinks they will never make it all the way to San Francisco. Mitch says they need to try, and should get started before another attack happens. He leaves Lydia to finish bandaging Melanie, and goes outside to pull Melanie’s car around to the front. Lydia tells him to see if he can get anything on the car radio.
Mitch opens the door and looks outside to find the entire property covered with birds, standing mostly silent, watching him. He slowly and quietly walks out the door and closes it behind him. He puts a hand on the rail of the porch, and a crow pecks at it and caws at him. As he walks to the garage, the birds move out of his way. He stops at the garage door, and a seagull pecks at his leg once. He slowly opens the garage side door and slips inside, closing it behind him. Some crows watch him from outside a window. He gets in the car, turns the radio on, and hears the announcer talking about the bird attacks. The radio announcer says that the attacks seem to have subsided for the moment, but that they come in waves with long intervals in between attacks. He also mentions that Bodega Bay is the center of the attacks but there have been reports of similar attacks in other towns nearby, that there are roadblocks all around the town, and that most townspeople managed to get out but some are still stuck there. He says there have been some discussions about whether the military should be sent in. Mitch turns the radio off and opens the garage car door to find the birds still calmly watching him. He gets back in the car and slowly drives it up to the front door as the birds get out of his way. He gets out of the car and slowly goes back inside.
Inside the house, Lydia asks him if he heard anything on the radio and he just replies “it’s alright.” He and Lydia help Melanie walk to the door and Cathy follows them. When they get to the door, they open it and start slowly walking outside into the mass of birds. Lydia and Melanie look frightened, and Melanie begins shaking and shouting “No!” Mitch calms her down and keeps moving her toward the car, almost dragging her. A few birds caw at them as they pass. Lydia and Melanie get in the car, and Cathy calls for Mitch from the doorway. He shushes her and tells her to wait. He returns to the front door and Cathy asks him if she can bring the lovebirds, saying that they have not hurt anyone. He says ok, takes the birds from Cathy, and they both walk to the car. Cathy gets in the front passenger seat and Mitch puts the birdcage on her lap. Melanie looks up at Lydia for comfort, and Lydia smiles at her and holds her closer. Melanie lays her head on Lydia’s shoulder and closes her eyes as Mitch gets into the car. Mitch starts the car and slowly drives away as the birds watch. They part for the car to pass but caw at it, and the din grows louder as the car fades into the distance.
Analysis
As Mitch and Melanie walk up the hill past the school, we again see the school from the same angle as before and during the attack on the children. This time, the school and surrounding electrical poles and wires are covered with perching crows, who watch menacingly as the pair make their way past. This represents the third iteration of this same shot, which gives us a clear progression of images at the school from serene, to chaotic during the attack, to menacing as the birds appear as if they now control the school. With Annie’s death, too, we sense a turning of the tide in favor of the birds—she was an important part of the resistance against the attacks with Mitch and Melanie, and the graphic image of her dead and twisted body on her front steps generates a sense of defeat and hopelessness in the viewers. We are also shown a brief moment in which Mitch loses his control, which is out of character for him, and also points out the importance of the episode in terms of breaking down our characters. Cathy’s crying on the way home and her victimization again draws out the vulnerability of the birds’ victims and the horrifying nature of their attacks.
Mitch and Melanie’s sealing of the house before the attacks is a classic apocalyptic preparation scene that appears in many films. It foreshadows the coming attack, and indicates that a ‘final showdown’ of sorts is about to take place. The characters soon confirm this, as Mitch points out the pattern of massing, then attacking, then waiting. The scene inside with the radio, the information that the phone lines are down, and the detail of a flock of birds flying inland to another town, further indicate the apocalyptic atmosphere of the final few scenes of the film. Melanie’s long and concerned stare at the flock that flies inland reiterates the types of actions that foreshadowed attacks in the first part of the film, suggesting that the flock is indeed headed to another town to begin attacking there.
The final scenes are characterized by a mental and physical breakdown of many of the characters, and, leading up to the attack, this most clearly surfaces in Lydia and Cathy. Lydia’s screaming at Mitch indicates that she is losing her control mentally and emotionally, and reveals some of the deeper psychological weaknesses that are still lingering from her husband’s death, which have been hinted at several times earlier in the film. Her immediate, negative response when Cathy asks if she can bring the lovebirds into the room with them may also be intended to highlight the way that fear has started to possess her and prevent her from using reason. A few moments later, Cathy has a physical reaction to her fear, becoming sick and vomiting from the tension as they wait for an attack to happen. This breaking down of the characters raises the stakes of the coming attack on the house.
The final attack, and the second attack on Melanie later that night, are the culmination of Hitchcock’s use of editing, tracking, and angles to heighten the suspense and chaos in the film. He begins the scene with less frequent cutting between frames, but the dramatic, upward-facing camera angles suggests where his characters' attention is focused. As the attack rises to a climax, however, we see faster tracking shots and more rapid cutting, which matches the building action. The camera angles and shot depths (heavy use of close-up) become disorienting, conveying the fear and disorientation that the characters feel. At moments of calm within the siege, such as when Mitch finally shuts the window that had been broken open, the editing reflects this too, and slows back down to steadier, longer, medium shots. Oblique camera angles still predominate, which keeps up the menacing atmosphere even in moments of relative calm. Our inability to hear any of the dialogue during the attack is also important: the silencing of humans in the film represents their helplessness against the birds, and the use of silence this close to the end of the film might seem to presage their ultimate defeat or death. Meanwhile, the din of the birds and the way it fluctuates also contributes to the suspense and our feelings of panic during the attack—especially notable is the syncing of a loud and distinct caw of one bird with the blackout that happens as the house loses power. When Melanie is attacked alone upstairs in the house, the rapid cutting, close-up, and use of Melanie’s perspective are especially notable, as the scene uses these three strategies over and over for an extended period of time to maximize suspense and Melanie’s victimization.
Hitchcock does several interesting things with Melanie’s characterization in the last few scenes. When she is attacked alone later that night, she holds out for a long time against the birds, trying to escape but eventually beginning to crumble in the face of their attacks. Though she calls for help, her last words as she faints (though hard to make out) are about making sure that Cathy is safe, drawing out the caring, protective, quite selfless spirit that we have come to see in her despite the assumptions with which we are presented at the start of the film. This also adds gravity to her subsequent psychological breakdown, because her attention to others over herself in such a crisis indicates that she is incredibly emotionally strong. The state in which she exists for the rest of the film is another example of the physical and mental deterioration that we have noted in our characters throughout the descent into chaos, and draws out a strong emotional response from the audience.
Finally, the end of the film leaves the ultimate questions of the film unanswered: why are the birds attacking, and what do they want? The eerie images of the birds watching as the Brenners and Melanie drive away have become some of the most culturally lasting images of the film, and they stand out as the ultimate example of the senselessness of the violence in the film. If the birds want to kill the Brenners, why do they not attack them as they flee the house? If they want something larger from the Brenners, why do they let them get away? One can (and some critics do) try to draw theories out of this last scene: perhaps the birds are achieving a goal in having the foreign species (the lovebirds) removed from their environment; perhaps their calmness represents the resolution of tensions between Lydia and Melanie; perhaps their goal was to reclaim Bodega Bay from humans as their territory alone, and they are satisfied by seeing the last humans flee. Still, any given theory is full of holes that Hitchcock has shown earlier in the film, and the most likely explanation is that there is no explanation. The birds are simply senselessly violent, and the ultimate horror of the film comes from the inexplicable nature of the attacks. The only thing we do know for sure is that there is some interval between attacks, during which the birds gather and wait, and their waiting in the final scene is consistent with this idea. It can then be assumed that another attack is soon to come, and since we know the attacks to be moving further inland, the fate of our protagonists is completely unknown. The movie leaves us unsure whether Melanie and Mitch will really ever be safe from the birds, and whether, if the attacks continue to spread, anybody in the world is ever safe from them.
