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Love, Catholicism and the Cuban Missile Crisis

posted 4 years ago by christomacin (4654)
14 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) 4 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) 4 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 (4654) 4 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) 4 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) 4 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 (591) 10 months ago

What a pile of shit.

[–] christomacin (4654) 10 months ago

What an intelligent comment, asshole.

[–] roreyking (591) 10 months ago

What a charming reply, turd.

[–] liscarkat (18367) 6 months ago

"Is it possible to read The Birds as a film about the danger of nuclear Armageddon and the need for love and reconciliation?"

It's possible to read any film as a film about anything you want it to be about.

[–] christomacin (4654) 6 months ago

Is it possible that Hitchcock had something like that in mind, is the question. What I think he had or didn't had in mind doesn't matter. The question still stands, because I do think he was metaphorically talking about something, but I could be completely wrong about what. He was religious, did drop references to "the end of the world ", and did make a film about the Cuban Missile Crisis, so it's not completely out of left field to at least ponder though, is it? I do think The Birds is at least metaphorical in a general religious sense, maybe not the specific Cold War context.

[–] roger1 (3616) 5 days ago

"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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It's possible to read any film as a film about anything you want it to be about.

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Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that Hitchcock gave interviews in 1963 (and later, in Hitchocck/Truffaut of 1968 in America) where he SPECIFCALLY referenced The Birds as a "nuclear bomb analogy." Other places he said it was a "doomsday film" or an "Armageddon film" but he was specific to nuclear war in some interviews. After all the Cuban Missile Crisis had occurred in October 1962 and The Birds premiered only a few months later in March of 1963((Easter, having missed a Christmas 1962 release date).

So nuclear war and "the end of the world" was on everybody's mind. "The Birds" came out in 1963. Dr. Strangelove, Fail Safe, and Seven Days in May came out in 1964. The Bedford Incident(Poitier and Widmark) came out in 1965. The Big Boom was on everybody's minds and The Birds was part of it(Hitchocck also referenced the 1959 post-nuke war movie On the Beach in interviews.)

[–] christomacin (4654) 4 days ago

So, my reading of the film was seemingly correct, even if the timing of the Cuban Missile Crisis was coincidental. That being said, the events of 1962 must have made a significant on Hitchcok, as he returned to that very topic a few years later with "Topaz". I had no idea Hitchcock even made those statments. So, thanks for bringing that to light.

Regardless, I think there must be something deeper Hitchcock had in mind with The Birds that isn't discussed a great deal. I mean, the love birds being the only avian creatures that don't attack has to mean SOMETHING. The "it's the end of the world!" segment in the diner is pretty on the nose, surely. The god-like view of the town of Bodega Bay going up in flames is very suggestive, as well. The end of the film with the ray of sunshine peeking through ominous clouds makes a lot more sense when you look at it through the lens of apocalypse and (maybe, if we're lucky) salvation.

It's the only Hitchcock film that doesn't have any logical explanation for it's events, and almost invites such interpretations. Well, perhaps Hitchcock teases us in "Family Plot" as to whether Blanche has psychic abilities, but that's done so tongue in cheek it's hard to take it seriously. Many of noted in other films Hitchcock's sense of guilt, and transferrance of guilt, which probably does have something to do with his upbringing. However, only a handful of Hitchcock films deal with spiritual themes more directly, such as "I Confess" and "The Wrong Man". Maybe we could call those two plus "The Birds" his "Catholic Trilogy"?

P.S. I'm not Catholic or even particularly a believer of any kind of religion at all, but I know Hitchcock was, so I don't think it's unreasonable to look for hints of it in his work, the rare times he let it peek through. This is I why I got so cross with the poster above and said some things I probably shouldn't have been baited into.

[–] roger1 (3616) 8 minutes ago

(Looking at the thread above me over several years, i have responded both as ecarle and my current name, roger1. Both are the same. I lost ecarle and can't get it back for now.)

Christomacin wrote:

So, my reading of the film was seemingly correct, even if the timing of the Cuban Missile Crisis was coincidental.

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Yes -- correct. Yes--the Cuban Missile Crisis was pretty coincidental -- about 6 months before the release of The Birds, which began filmlng BEFORE the Cuban Missile Crisis.

That said, Hitchcock also referenced a novel that became a 1959 movie called "On the Beach." Even BEFORE the Cuban Missile Crisis made things "real," that FICTIONAL movie put the idea into everybody's minds: "What if the superpower launched their nukes and killed everybody on the planet immediately ...leaving a thousand or so still alive in Australia to die slowly when the fallout reached them." The movie has a REAL doomsday feeling, as the survivors have dinner parties and romances and car races all the time knowing that they ALL (not just one person) have "a few months to live."

"On the Beach" was given simultaneous premieres in America and RUSSIA(showing that the Cold War could thaw) along with other international locales(London, Paris.)

So Hollywood was already trying to make a significant statement on world nuclear dangers as early as 1959. (On the Beach was a flop, BTW -- people didn't want to "enjoy" the thought of their mass death.) .

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[–] roger1 (3616) 4 minutes ago

That being said, the events of 1962 must have made a significant on Hitchcock, as he returned to that very topic a few years later with "Topaz".

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Yes..and in between The Birds and Topaz(less the non-political Marnie), Hitchcock took on nuclear issues with Torn Curtain -- in which Paul Newman plays a NUCLEAR scientist working on weapons and anti-weapons. Torn Curtain also took on the very bleak idea of "the Iron Curtain" in East Germany -- "free" persons on one side of a wall, and "oppressed" people on the other side. People were shot trying to climb that wall to the "free" side. Torn Curtain posits Paul Newman and Julie Andrews trapping themselves in the "oppressed side" and escaping (by other means than the wall) to the free side.

So, you could say that The Birds, Torn Curtain, and Topaz were "Hitchcock's nuclear trilogy" and that the director who had taken on World Warr II as a theme in the 30s and 40s, was now taking on the nuclear age in the 60s (plus, unamed Commiunists were the villains in The Man Who Knew Too Much '56 and North by Northwest.)

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I had no idea Hitchcock even made those statements. So, thanks for bringing that to light.

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You are welcome. All my years of obscure reading sometimes pay off. Ha.

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