STARTING WITH A PAIR OF LOVEBIRDS… AND ENDING WITH AN AVIAN APOCALYPSE.
Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), a spoiled and impetuous San Francisco socialite, poses as a pet-shop employee to gain the attention of Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), a handsome criminal defense attorney who has come to the shop, ostensibly to purchase a pair of lovebirds for his preteen sister’s birthday. In reality, Mitch knows exactly who Melanie is and turns the tables on her prank, angering her, but she refuses to let him have the last word. She buys the lovebirds herself and personally delivers them to his family’s house north of the city in the seaside town of Bodega Bay. She sneaks the birds onto the waterfront property by way of an outboard motorboat, and as she returns to the wharf across the bay, she is attacked by a seagull and sustains a small cut to her forehead. Mitch, who spotted her leaving the house, applies first aid to her injury and formally invites her back to the house. Melanie meets his formidable yet clinging mother, Lydia (Jessica Tandy), and his kid sister, Cathy (Veronica Cartwright). She makes the acquaintance of Mitch’s ex-girlfriend, schoolteacher Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), who has clearly not relinquished her flame. Nonetheless, she welcomes Melanie as a houseguest, only to have their evening interrupted by another strangely behaving gull that crashes into Annie’s front door, killing itself.
The bird attacks escalate, and Hitchcock builds one quietly unforgettable set piece after another. One is Lydia’s discovery of a hideous fatality, played out in complete silence until she finishes her traumatic drive home. In the next, Lydia begs Melanie to check that Cathy is safe at school. As Melanie sits on a bench outside the schoolhouse, calmly smoking a cigarette and waiting for school to let out, a huge number of crows assemble on the playground equipment behind her. The growing menace is paradoxically underscored not by menacing music—the film has no formal score—but by the children’s singing a rollicking nursery ditty. At a restaurant near the harbor, Melanie’s stories are met with incredulity by an elderly ornithologist, who assures her that birds aren’t intelligent enough to stage a mass attack. She is soon proved wrong.
The death of Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette)