One of the great things about no explination is that it allows us to come up with our own theories for the bird attacks. Personally I like to take a more scientific approach to the bird attacks, believing them to be not attacks but rather migratory inturuption caused by solar flares.
I still had a ham sandwich for lunch and my mom makes great pork chops-George Allen
Bodega Bay was built over an ancient avian burial ground.
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he wasn't a great big pansy.
When I had first seen this movie and Melanie has an encounter with the mother who tells her that it was said that when she came to the town this is when all the bird attacks started and called her evil.
I started to think at one point that maybe there was some connection.
More recently I can't say I would have any theorie - but this movie is still sooo chilling even after the loads of times I have watched it.
This must have been incredible to see on the big screen when it first came out in 1963.
It certainly was.
shareThe fisherman talks about a gull attack on one of his boats a week prior. Also the radio report says there were attacks on other towns as well. Which means Melanie didn't "bring on" the attacks.
PS: This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R didn't exist.share
Works for me.
Bodega Bay was built over an ancient avian burial ground.
I would loved to have heard Rod Taylor say this line:
"You moved the headstones, but you didn't move the birdies, did you? WHY? WHHHHYYYYYYYYYY?!!!!"
I know this person is probably no longer a member, but this has to be the funniest thing I've read on these boards.
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Democracy is the pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. H.L. Mencken
I blame Obama.
Janet! Donkeys!
I think the birds are fighting back against mankind. There is the pet-shop part when we see caged birds. There is the cafe part when in the background someone is ordering fried chicken. That makes me think the birds are fed-up with humans.
shareHitchcock was "aiming for the fences" with this one. He had everything but a Best Director Oscar, and he seems to have felt that only with a "really big symbolic idea" driving "The Birds" could he get one.
I don't think Hitchcock ever really wanted an explanation for the birds doing what they are doing.
But I would suggest: it can't be for a "small" reason. It can't be because they have rabies or even because they want revenge for Thanksgiving and bird hunting.
Hitchocck SUGGESTS that Thanksgiving/hunting reason in his trailer for The Birds but ask this...why wouldn't all the OTHER animals we hunt and eat come after us? Cattle? Fish?
Hey, wait a minute. Really, birds are the main animals other than cattle and fish we DO eat. And outside of a shark or pirhana or barracuda...we can't have killer fish...they can't come on land. And stampeding cattle can't get down into chimneys and up into attic rooms like the birds. (OK, we slaughter some other animal breeds, too -- pigs, deer...but, not all that many categories for domestic food.)
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Still, "Something Big" is going on with the bird attacks and I daresay the big solution might well be the religious one:
God has begun the project of removing the human species from the planet.
For these killer birds seem to be driven by an "overriding intelligence" that commands them to group together, wait at rest for long periods...and then suddenly go berserk.
The birds here are presented very much like storms or hurricanes or tornadoes..."climatic changes" that build and build and build and then unleash destruction...and then end.
And there are those who have believed, over the centuries, that savage attacks "from nature" ARE directed by a God-like intelligence. He,she or it doesn't SAY anything....it just DOES things. Unleashes things. Thunderstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes..earthquakes, floods, wildfires....
To go to the "God theory" of the bird attacks loses our non-believers rapidly, but there is also the pseudonym of "nature" for patterns of behavior that we cannot explain in human scientific terms. If we can't explain why a skunk has THAT smell, or why a spider builds a web to trap prey, or why a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, or why birds fly in a certain "V" pattern -- well, those are REAL unexplainable things in REAL life.
"The Birds" just asks us to go a bit farther in comprehending what might happen if a "higher universal intelligence" decided it was time to exterminate the human species.
And WHY would that intelligence seek to exterminate humans? Because the humans now had nuclear weaponry and the ability to wipe out ALL species from the earth.
Hey, it a theory.
Your "God Theory" does not work because God gave this earth to humans to be their home for eternity. Only the bad people will be off the earth-Psalms 115:16; Psalms 37:10, 11
"Do All Things For God's Glory"-1 Corinthians 10:31
I try doing this with my posts
I speculate it is because we taste like chicken!
In the frozen land of Nador they were forced to eat Robins minstrels. And there was much rejoicing.
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I think the bird expert in the diner had something to do with it. I mean, how many bird experts are there in the world? What are the odds that one would just happen to be in Bodega Bay the day the birds attack? I think she was ticked at the way people treats birds and somehow found a way to train a large group of them to attack people.
shareMaybe the bird expert was a geneticist? Just performing studies on altering the bird's DNA for some reason (probably well-intentioned) only to cause them to become vicious carnivorous maniacs.
Y'know, Grayditch, basically.
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It's me....Bara...it's always bloody Bara!
I don't believe it was intended for there to be any explanation for it, but if I had to come up with one i'd say it was probably nature starting to fight back against humans. Human activity has disrupted the ecosystem and a balance needs to be restored, the birds began perceiving humans as a threat and started attacking them on sight. Actually I was half-expecting for someone in the movie to come up with this theory, and was surprised when nobody said it after Cathy specifically asked why the birds were attacking people.
Even this, though, I don't know if it's adequate. It's just what i'd expect, I guess. Humans have been a threat to the environment for a long while, so why only now ("now" being 1963)? Of course, at that time, humans were becoming an even bigger threat due to the rising level of industrial development and its destructive effect on the environment, as well as the development of more destructive weapons of war, but animals wouldn't perceive the latter change (well, animals in Asia would, since wars from the 1930s to 70s pretty much burned much of the region to the ground, but animals in California wouldn't notice a difference). And even then, why only birds? And very common birds that have weathered human activity fairly well too, such as seagulls and crows.
Of course there's the religious "end of the world" scenario, but even then, why only birds, and why only in that general area? Though you could say it's only just starting then and there.
Or maybe it's something more simple, like a local chemical plant or something releasing stuff into the air that caused the birds of the area to go insane.
The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of history.
-Mao Zedong
I've also tried to interpret this movie from the standpoint of what was going on in the world at the time. WW2 had ended less than 20 years earlier, and the world was gripped in a Cold War and threat of nuclear war. Former colonies were demanding and fighting for their independence. There was also growing civil unrest within the United States and other countries.
The fact that Melanie was created as a daughter of a wealthy newspaper publisher might also be significant, since freedom fighters, protesters or anyone with a cause would certainly want to get the attention of the press.
I'm sure it was caused by global warming.
Or, no, wait a minute. It was 1963. The birds had all read Silent Spring, published the year before. As a result, they were mad as hell and weren't going to take it any more.