“I wonder if it is supposed to be a sly play on words that the film The Birds is really almost entirely about women.
The awkward pauses, glances, and conversations between Tippi Hedren (the poor man’s Grace Kelly) and Suzanne Pleshette (the rich man’s Stockard Channing) chew the scenery in a way that the titular animals never do except in that final scene.
Jessica Tandy and Pleschette and Hedren spend their catty energy almost entirely on the attentions of hamburger-in-suit Rod Taylor. The women fight almost resignedly for this hunk of middle age while the passions of the (actual) birds rise to a fever pitch.
Bird attacks almost always follow conversations with or about Mitch, Taylor’s character, our great jutting jaw-and-chin. One is left to ponder whether this biblical plague visited upon the inhabitants of sleepy Bodega Bay is really little more than a manifestation of the prefeminist fear that a powered class of men felt when forced, for the first time, to truly face up to the power of femininity unbridled.
Women, it should be said, have often been associated with birds - in slang and in mythology – both to celebrate their otherworldliness (from the male perspective) and to denigrate it.
The awkward pauses, glances, and conversations between Tippi Hedren (the poor man’s Grace Kelly) and Suzanne Pleshette (the rich man’s Stockard Channing) chew the scenery in a way that the titular animals never do except in that final scene.
Jessica Tandy and Pleschette and Hedren spend their catty energy almost entirely on the attentions of hamburger-in-suit Rod Taylor. The women fight almost resignedly for this hunk of middle age while the passions of the (actual) birds rise to a fever pitch.
Bird attacks almost always follow conversations with or about Mitch, Taylor’s character, our great jutting jaw-and-chin. One is left to ponder whether this biblical plague visited upon the inhabitants of sleepy Bodega Bay is really little more than a manifestation of the prefeminist fear that a powered class of men felt when forced, for the first time, to truly face up to the power of femininity unbridled.
Women, it should be said, have often been associated with birds - in slang and in mythology – both to celebrate their otherworldliness (from the male perspective) and to denigrate it.
And, the only safe haven when the birds stage their first attack is in the Tides Restaurant, named for that mysterious and powerful force of nature that, like women are supposed to be, is ruled by the moon.
Inside we find, huddled and angry, the women of Bodega Bay, who see Tippi as the cause of it all. Is this because she is a liberated (though idle) woman? Or is it because – perhaps as in all Hitchcock films – the female lead is really a cipher for female sexuality, a subject feared as much by the women of Bodega Bay as by the men? Is it that Mitch, as the only male in the town of any import, is so jealously guarded as a source of lantern jaw and broad shouldering?
In the end, when our heroes beat that slow, sinister retreat, is Hitchcock suggesting a détente with the surging power of the feminine? Is it meant as a kind of terrible rebuke of feminism, that it can be figured as a scourge from which none will escape, run as they may?”
He wondered (aloud) as his hand wandered (allowed) up her skirt. She continued to watch the movie.
Inside we find, huddled and angry, the women of Bodega Bay, who see Tippi as the cause of it all. Is this because she is a liberated (though idle) woman? Or is it because – perhaps as in all Hitchcock films – the female lead is really a cipher for female sexuality, a subject feared as much by the women of Bodega Bay as by the men? Is it that Mitch, as the only male in the town of any import, is so jealously guarded as a source of lantern jaw and broad shouldering?
In the end, when our heroes beat that slow, sinister retreat, is Hitchcock suggesting a détente with the surging power of the feminine? Is it meant as a kind of terrible rebuke of feminism, that it can be figured as a scourge from which none will escape, run as they may?”
He wondered (aloud) as his hand wandered (allowed) up her skirt. She continued to watch the movie.
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