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New York Times (01/Apr/1962) - Watching 'Birds': Happy Hitchcock Films Terror-Ridden Tale

(c) The New York Times (01/Apr/1962)

Watching 'Birds': Happy Hitchcock Films Terror-Ridden Tale

Bodega Bay, Calif. -- Alfred Hitchcock believes that birds are delightful little villains. With full knowledge that he is risking the wrath of Audubon Societies throughout the United States, the portly director is relishing immensely the task of making birds abominable. His vehicle for avicular terror is "The Birds," a novella by Daphne Du Maurier adapted by Evan Hunter ("The Blackboard Jungle"), which he is filming at this tiny inlet on the Pacific Coast about sixty miles north of San Francisco.

Bodega Bay is a community of neat white buildings set amid rolling green hills on the edge of a sparkling bay. Moviegoers eventually will be able to see this pretty little town devastated by birds.

Typical of this turnabout, which could be called a Hitchcock trade-marke, was his despair at the sunny weather that prevailed here. "It's a color film and I wanted it dark and gloomy. Now we'll have to subdue the color in the film lab."

High Tension

"Technically, this is the most difficult film I ever made," Hitchcock continued. "We're using millions of birds -- seagulls, ravens, finches. We have trained birds for the closeups, but we'll be superimposing thousands of other birds on each scene. We have another crew getting shots of birds against the sky at the San Francisco city dump."

This is the first film the director has made without a releasing agreement with a major studio. "It's just doing away with another unnecessary step," he explained. "We didn't get a cent from Paramount on 'Psycho' until we delivered the negative, and for that they got 20 percent of the picture. You might say we're doing this one with television money."

The equipment for the film is from the Revue Studio, where Hitchcock makes his television show. The interior scenes and technical work will be done there. "M.C.A. (Music Corporation of America) is my agent and they own Revue. But they don't have anything to do with this picture." He smiled and whispered confidentially, "Their tentacles haven't reached quite this far."

This area is not new to the director. He made "Shadow of a Doubt" at nearby Santa Rosa in 1942 with Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright. Among the buildings in Bodega Bay being used for "The Birds" are a 100-year-old school, a similarly aged Roman Catholic church and a house built by colonizing Russians almost 150 years ago.

Starring in the film are Rod Taylor, Suzanne Pleshette, Jessica Tandy and 'Tippi' Hedren. Hitchcock signed Miss Hedren, a New York model, to a contract after having seen her in a television commercial. He insisted that she enclose her first name in single quotation marks, but would not explain why. "I signed her because she is a classic beauty. Movies don't have them any more. Grace Kelly was the last." This is Miss Hedren's first film and, according to Hitchcock, she has the starring role.

Miss Kelly, or, officially, Her Serene Highness, Princess Grace of Monaco, will be leaving that principality temporarily this summer for the West Coast, as the world was fully informed just recently, to star in Hitchcock's next film, "Marnie", which Hunter also will adapt.

It will be based on Winston Graham's English novel of the same name in which Miss Kelly will portray the title role, that of a girl who steals and lies to her employers until she falls hopelessly in love.

Feathered Friends?

Discussing "The Birds," Mr. Hitchcock described with great glee scenes of birds pecking out a man's eyes, blowing up a gas station and tearing away the top of a convertible automobile. "The story has been done on radio and, I think, on television, but it's really a movie," Hitchcock explained.

In the scene that he was directing, about twenty children were being chased by huge ravens down a long hill toward the bay. The Misses Hedren and Pleshette were frantically dragging and carrying those children who lagged. Some of the youngsters had mechanical stuffed ravens attached to their clothes. As they ran, these birds realistically flew after them, pecking at their heads. The director pointed out that there would be hundreds of birds in the scene when it was shown continually on theatre screens. Much more frightening to the children than the birds was a huge camera truck rolling rapidly down the hill on their heels. After several takes on the mile-long hill, both the children and the actresses were staggering rather than running.

Orders From Above

Commenting on his technique with actors, Hitchcock elaborated, "I tell them why they are doing what they are doing," he said. "I show them how a particular shot fits into the movie. I just explained to Miss Hedren why she had to look back as she stopped to pick up a child. Because in the movie, the next shot will be a close-up of a raven flying at her head."

The director has a sketch for every shot, some of which will be on the screen only two- thirds of a second. The scene on the hill, which he spent a day filming, will run forty to fifty seconds, he estimated.

Hitchcock worked with Hunter, his scenarist, and art director Bob Boyle from the beginning. "We came up here several times because the story has to fit the location," he declared. "Everything people do in the picture must be natural. In the original novella they were French peasants."

When the possibility of the organized ire of bird-lovers was called to Hitchcock's attention, he smiled and rubbed his hands. "I hope so," he said, as a girl handed him his afternoon tea.

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