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Love, Catholicism and the Cuban Missile Crisis

posted 3 years ago by christomacin (4553)
8 replies | jump to latest

The theme of love and reconciliation is subtext in The Birds. Keep in mind Hitchcock was a devout Catholic. Although the general theme of guilt, Catholic or otherwise, runs throughout all of his films, religion didn't crop up often. The few occasions it did were memorable. I Confess is probably Hitchcock's most overtly Catholic film, dealing with a priest who has his faith tested after a murderer confesses to him. If I recall, The Wrong Man had a bit of religious subtext as well. Think also of Mrs. Blaney in Frenzy, who prays (to little effect) as she is being killed by Rusk. She knew her time was up and used religion as a last refuge from Rusk's brute, unreasoning savagery.

For The Birds, I think the lovebirds are an important symbol. They never get aggressive or violent even though all the other birds do. I think this is significant. As for the human characters, the mother (Jessica Tandy) and Melanie (Tippi Hedren) start off on the wrong foot and are antagonistic. Mitch (Rod Taylor) and Melanie also start off very antagonistically. There is also tension between Annie (Suzanne Pleshette) and Melanie. By the end of the film, all of these characters are reconciled and come to care for each other. I think one of the key themes of the film is love and reconciliation in the face of a harsh and indifferent universe. When they drive off at the end of the film, we do see the birds have taken over (that's true), BUT there is also a shaft of sunlight coming through the clouds in the distance. This suggests at least the possibility of hope at the end of the film.

I'd also mention that the theme of the Apocalypse is woven into the story as well. We have the famous "It's the end of the world" refrain from the "Drunken Doomsayer" (Karl Swenson) in the diner. Remember, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 had only (just barely) been resolved the year before the release of The Birds in 1963. Hitchcock of course made a film about the Cuban Missile crisis six years later in 1969 (Topaz), so it was clearly a topic of interest to him. Is it possible to read The Birds as a film about the danger of nuclear Armageddon and the need for love and reconciliation?

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I'd also mention that the theme of the Apocalypse is woven into the story as well. We have the famous "It's the end of the world" refrain from the "Drunken Doomsayer" (Karl Swenson) in the diner. Remember, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 had only (just barely) been resolved the year before the release of The Birds in 1963. Hitchcock of course made a film about the Cuban Missile crisis six years later in 1969 (Topaz), so it was clearly a topic of interest to him. Is it possible to read The Birds as a film about the danger of nuclear Armageddon and the need for love and reconciliation?

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Yes, I think that is a good call about The Birds and its relationship to both a general idea of the Apocalypse and the specific threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in October of 1962, and given that The Birds was released barely 6 months later in March of 1963, I don't think that the Cuban Missile Crisis "inspired" The Birds, though it was happening during filming I think. I know for a fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis happened when a LATER (December, 1963) release called Charade was being filmed , and that the director of that thriller (starring old Hitchcock hand Cary Grant , Stanley Donen, got very mopey and told his cast: "What does making this movie matter? We're all going to die soon."

A movie that HAD come out several years before The Birds -- and which Hitchcock referenced in interviews about The Birds -- was Stanley Kramer's 1959 "On the Beach" with Psycho star Anthony Perkins, plus Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, and Fred Astaire, in a movie about the aftermath of worldwide nuclear war and the last days of the few survivors. That film had set the table for a worldwide fear of nuclear armageddon, and Hitchcock incorporated that fear into The Birds.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

With The Birds in 1963 as a nuclear war simile, and then Torn Curtain as a tale of nuclear secrets between Russia and the US, and then Topaz with its tale OF the Cuban Missile Crisis, I guess you could call the three films "Hitchcock's nuclear war trilogy." Alas, the second two were considered mediocre, and The Birds has different problems of its own. There is always a danger of getting into geopolitics and trying to make it exciting.

[–] christomacin (4553) 3 years ago

By the way, one of the lovebirds used in the film was killed by the other one during filming... LOL. They didn't get the memo.

P.S. Hitch's war-time film Lifeboat also stressed the need for human beings to cooperate and get along for the greater good.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

By the way, one of the lovebirds used in the film was killed by the other one during filming... LOL. They didn't get the memo.
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REALLY?! I did not know that. How ironic..particularly given their role in the story.

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P.S. Hitch's war-time film Lifeboat also stressed the need for human beings to cooperate and get along for the greater good.

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One very interesting thing about how and when Alfred Hitchcock came along in film history is when he came along in WORLD history: both before, during, and immediately after WWII. Hence , a significant slice of his films had Nazis as villains(and easy villains they are) WHILE THE WAR WAS ON(mostly.) Whereas the Nazis as villains in Raiders of the Lost Ark were "historical and long vanquished" the Nazis during Hitchcock's time were very real and possibly poised to win and take over the world. If that happened, Hitchcock surely would have been executed for his "propaganda":

The Lady Vanishes(be careful, England, the Nazis are coming)
Foreign Correspondent(be careful, America, the Nazis are coming)
Saboteur(be careful, America, the Nazis are already among us)
Lifeboat(be careful, everybody -- you must join together to defeat the Nazis)
Notorious(be careful, everybody - the Nazis moved to Rio and they want to come back with nukes.)

That's a lot of Hitchcock's films.

Came the Cold War and the shift to Communism as the threat, Hitchcock couldn't name the Communists as the bad guys in Man Who Knew Too Much '56 or North by Northwest, and some of the bad reviews for Torn Curtain and Topaz came from leftist critics who "dug" Castro and maybe Russia(and East Germany) a little bit too. Hitchcock stuck by his guns: totalitarianism was something to be fought from any source.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The problem with the turn of the tide from Nazism to Communism was that Hitchcock's bread and butter -- the spy film -- suddenly became controversial. Even James Bond shifted from the Russians as villains(via SMERSH) to an international organized crime group called SPECTRE.

Hitchcock eventually figured this out and his final two films -- Frenzy and Family Plot --weren't about spies at all.

[–] roreyking (559) 4 months ago

What a pile of shit.

[–] christomacin (4553) 4 months ago

What an intelligent comment, asshole.

[–] roreyking (559) 4 months ago

What a charming reply, turd.