Summary
Melanie drives up to the front of the school, and we hear children singing a song in the background. As the song continues through the next several shots, we can make out that it is about a wife who defies conventions by hardly cleaning herself or her house, and by cooking badly (the song is sometimes called “Risseldy Rosseldy,” “Nickety Nackety,” or “I married my wife in the month of June”). Melanie enters the school and sticks her head through the door in the back of the classroom as the children continue singing while Annie conducts them. Melanie and Annie mouth a few words and gesture across the room, which the audience is unable to decipher. Melanie closes the door and goes back outside to wait for school to end, but we can still hear the children singing in the background. She walks down the school steps, notices a bench near the jungle gym, and goes over to sit on it. Moments after she sits, a single crow lands on the jungle gym behind her, but she does not notice. She takes out a cigarette, lights it, and the camera cuts back to the jungle gym to show that four crows are now perched on it. As the singing continues, the camera cuts back and forth between Melanie, as she smokes her cigarette, and the jungle gym, as more and more crows come to perch on it. She notices a crow flying above her and follows it with her gaze through the sky. She watches it land on the jungle gym, and finally realizes that the playground is now full of blackbirds that have been perching ominously behind her. She silently gasps in shock and starts walking cautiously toward the school. As she reaches the steps the song ends and we hear Annie tell them to pack up their books and get ready for recess.
Melanie hurries into the classroom, rushes up to Annie and tells her to quickly shut the door out to the school yard. Annie obeys and asks what is going on, and Melanie takes her to the window to show her the birds that are gathering. She tells Annie that they should get the children out of the school. Annie walks to the front of the class and claps for them to be quiet. She tells them that she wants to show Melanie how the class conducts itself for a fire drill, and the children react with frustration and disappointment. She tells them that if they live nearby they should go directly home, and the rest of the children should go all the way down the hill. She tells them that they need to be as quiet as possible until she tells them to run, and that they should run as quickly as they can once she says so. She and Melanie begin taking them outside, and a long shot of the jungle gym shows the group of crows waiting and rustling their feathers. We hear the noise of the children leaving the school, and suddenly the crows all take off from the playground. As the children run screaming from the school, the mass of crows emerges from the other side of the building. The crows start swooping down at the children as they run, and the sound of their cawing mixes with the screams of the children.
The images cut quickly between medium and long shots of the children running and close shots of their legs and faces as the crows attack. A young boy and a young girl are attacked from behind by crows, but they shake them off. A close up of a young girl shows a crow grabbing her collar and trying to peck at her face, but she pushes it away. The children are often shown running in pairs, and at various points we see Melanie trying to help shepherd the children to safety amid the chaos. A couple of children who are running turn around to look up at the crows chasing them and scream in horror as the crows swoop at them. More crows grab various children by the collar and the children try to shake them off. A young girl is knocked over by a crow and her glasses fall off and shatter. It turns out she is a friend of Cathy’s so she screams for Cathy to help her. Cathy and Melanie run over, pull a bunch of crows off her back, and help her up. Melanie looks around for a safe shelter and brings the girls to a nearby car. All three get inside the car, and it turns out that Cathy’s friend was badly injured and her face is covered in blood. Melanie makes sure the windows of the car are rolled up and the doors are locked, and checks to see if there is a key in the ignition but is dismayed to find it absent. She begins honking the horn to try to scare the birds away, some of which are now attacking the car. A shot of the two girls shows them both crying, and then Melanie appears to calm as she notices that the crows seem to be dispersing of their own accord.
In the next scene, Melanie is on the phone at The Tides restaurant in the center of town, while Deke, who runs the restaurant, stands behind the bar. She is telling her father on the phone about what happened at the school. A shot of the whole restaurant shows nearly all of the customers staring at her and listening to the conversation. She gives details in the form of answers to questions that her father is asking, though we do not hear the other side of the conversation. While this is happening, an older woman (Mrs. Bundy) comes into the restaurant and asks Deke for some change. She hears Melanie ask her father if there is a difference between crows and blackbirds, and she interjects to say that there is “most definitely” a difference, in a somewhat condescending tone. Mrs. Bundy goes to buy cigarettes from the machine behind Melanie while Melanie continues relaying information to her father. Melanie hangs up as Mrs. Bundy returns to the bar, and Mrs. Bundy starts explaining some differences and similarities between crows and blackbirds. Melanie thanks her and asks Deke for the phone number of the Fawcett farm, and he hands her a phonebook. Mrs. Bundy scoffs at the idea that birds were attacking the school, saying she does not think any birds are smart enough to launch a mass attack. Melanie tells her that she was there and saw it happen, but Mrs. Bundy does not take her seriously. Ms. Bundy goes on to explain that she is an ornithologist, and that she knows that birds are not aggressive animals. She is interrupted by Helen, Deke’s wife who helps run the restaurant, calling orders into the kitchen.
The scene starts picking up speed at this point. In rapid succession: Melanie gets through to the farm on the phone and asks to speak with Mitch, Mrs. Bundy asserts that mankind is to blame for the destruction of the earth, Deke interrupts her and agitatedly tells her that Melanie saw the attack (suggesting that Mrs. Bundy is being stubborn), Mrs. Bundy responds that it is impossible, Melanie gets through to Mitch, and a drunk shouts from the end of the bar at them that it is “the end of the world.” Helen then asks what exactly happened at the school, and he announces to her and the rest of the restaurant that a bunch of crows attacked the kids at the school. The drunk again asserts that it is the end of the world, and quotes Ezekiel 6 ("doom for the mountains of Israel"). Helen retorts with a quote from Isaiah 5, which criticizes drunks ("Woes to the wicked"), and the drunk, who knows his bible well, acknowledges the chapter but again insists that it is the end of the world. Mrs. Bundy smugly says that a few birds could not bring about the end of the world, and she, Melanie, and Deke, argue about the incident. Mr. Sholes interrupts them from the other side of the restaurant to ask how many gulls Mrs. Bundy counted at their Christmas count, and tells the restaurant that a bunch of gulls attacked his fishing boat last week. Deke connects it to the incident in which Melanie was attacked by a gull while riding a boat across the harbor.
As Helen clears the table of a mother and two children, the mother asks her to tell the group at the bar to quiet down with their talk of the birds, because they are frightening the children, though she seems to be the most frightened herself. Mr. Sholes continues his story about the gulls, saying that they almost tore his skipper’s arm off, and Helen tells him to keep it down or he will scare the children. Mrs. Bundy tells him he should try to be logical, and that the gulls were probably after the fish on the boat. Melanie asks what the crows at the school would have been after, and Mrs. Bundy replies by asking her what she thinks. Melanie says she thinks they were after the children, and were trying to kill them. Mrs. Bundy asks why they would do that, and Melanie admits she does not know. Mrs. Bundy goes on to say that it does not make sense that birds would start a war on humanity now, after existing for 140 million years peacefully, and Melanie defends herself by saying that no one called it war. Behind Melanie, a traveling salesman sits down and orders a drink. Mr. Sholes begins to back down from his position, admitting that maybe they were after the fish, and the traveling salesmen interjects to say that they should all get guns and wipe birds off the face of the planet. Mrs. Bundy laughs at the idea, telling him it is impossible because there are probably more than 100 billion birds in the world, and the drunk nods his head and again repeats that it is the end of the world. A shot of the table with the family shows the frightened mother telling her children to hurry up and finish their food so they can leave, and her son asks if the birds are going to eat them.
Mr. Sholes begins to agree with Mrs. Bundy, saying that they are probably getting carried away, but Melanie tells him it was hundreds of birds of different species. Mrs. Bundy laughs and says that different species flocking together is impossible, and if it happened we would not stand a chance against them. Mr. Sholes agrees, and as they talk about this idea, a shot of the family shows the mother becoming more and more distressed. She interrupts, saying she does not understand why they do not believe Melanie. The cook comes out of the kitchen and asks what is happening, and they all explain the situation to him. The frightened mother scolds them for debating the situation instead of doing anything about it, and her fear makes her own children more scared. She asks how to find the freeway to get to San Francisco, and the traveling salesman tells her she can follow him when he finishes his drink. Mitch and Al enter the restaurant, and Mitch asks Melanie where Cathy is. Melanie tells him that Cathy is safe with Annie, and the cook asks Mitch and Al why they are not at the school, where the second attack happened. Al says he was just coming back from Dan Fawcett’s farm, and Mitch interrupts to say that Dan was killed by birds. Al tells him to calm down, because they do not know for a fact that birds were the culprit. Al tells the restaurant that the Santa Rosa police think it was a burglar, and that the birds got into the house after the murder happened. The frightened mother asks if the Santa Rosa police have been to the school, and nervously asks the traveling salesman if he is ready to leave. He tells her to calm down because there is not a bird in sight, and the drunk interjects with a quote from Matthew 6: “Look to the birds of the air: they do not sow or reap…Yet our heavenly father feeds them.”
The traveling salesman mentions that a similar thing happened in Santa Cruz, and he and Mrs. Bundy recount the story, in which hundreds of seagulls got lost in the fog and flew into the city, smashed through windows and made a mess, but were gone after a few days. The frightened woman stands with her children and tells the salesman that she is leaving whether he is coming or not, so he finishes his drink and leaves with her, wishing the restaurant good luck. The drunk toasts him as he is leaving by again saying it is the end of the world. Mr. Sholes says he better head back to work, but Mitch asks him to stay, telling him that they would be crazy to ignore the problem. Mrs. Bundy smugly asks if he is referring to the “bird war,” and Mitch replies that she can call it whatever she wants (war, plague, etc.) but he knows they will be back for another attack. She scoffs, calling it ridiculous, and Mitch takes Mr. Sholes aside as Melanie follows them. Mitch tries to convince him to help because he is an important figure in the town and people listen to him, but Mr. Sholes does not believe there is really a threat. Mitch tells Mr. Sholes that he has a plan to save the town from the birds by making fog from smoke to confuse them. As they are talking, seagulls begin cawing in the background, and Melanie goes to the window. She calls for everyone to look outside.
Outside the window, two birds attack a man who is pumping gas across the street, knocking him over. His pump comes out of the car and gasoline pours out on the pavement. Mitch yells that they are attacking again, tells Melanie to stay in the restaurant, and runs out the door with Al and Deke. Mr. Sholes and two other men also go to the door to go outside, and as they open it, the frightened mother runs back inside with her two children, screaming. Mitch, Al, and Deke run across the street to check on the man at the gas station, who is still lying on the ground, and everyone in the restaurant goes to the window to watch. As the men try to help the fallen gas station customer, gas continues pouring out of the pump on the ground, and the gas begins trickling down the road toward a parking lot, where it reaches the side of a parked car. A man steps out of the car and begins lighting his cigar. Melanie notices from the window and tells the rest of the people in the restaurant, who all open the window and shout at him not to drop his match. He hears them and looks up, but the match burns his finger and he drops it. The gas causes a massive explosion that consumes him and his car in flames, and his body goes limp and falls against the side of the car. Several men start running toward the fire to try to help, but then the surrounding cars also blow up. The fire follows the trail of gas back to the gas station, causing the gas pump and the car there to blow up as well. Luckily, Mitch and Al get away just in time, carrying the man who had been knocked over with them. An aerial shot shows the fire drawing a massive line through the center of town, from the parking lot on the pier across the road to the gas station, as several people run around trying to help put out the fire and rescue others who are in danger. A few seagulls appear in front of the camera, interrupting the shot, and appear to be flying down toward the town. Their cawing grows louder and more seagulls join, until eventually the view of the town is almost entirely obstructed by gulls.
Back down near the restaurant, we see Melanie and several other patrons rush outside. Some turn around and go back in when they encounter the smoke, birds, and general commotion. Melanie runs to a nearby phone booth, gets inside, and shuts the door. The film cuts rapidly between medium shots of Melanie inside the phone booth, and shots of her point of view from the booth as she looks around the town at the destruction. Birds rush at the booth and smash into the glass, and because of the perspective, they appear to be flying right at the audience. Melanie becomes distressed and starts flailing around the inside of the booth, cowering from gulls as they crash into the glass. A car comes barreling down the road, smashes right through a stop sign, and seems to be headed straight for the phone booth. Melanie turns and hides her face in fear, but the car swerves and dodges the phone booth at the last minute, coming to a stop next to it. Melanie looks through the window of the car and sees a man in the driver’s seat trying to fight off several gulls that have gotten inside the car, and are attacking him as he drives. He drives away again after a moment, but soon crashes into the exploded, and still burning, cars in the parking lot. Melanie gasps as she sees this, but the driver jumps out of the car and runs away just in time to avoid burning as his own car explodes.
Melanie opens the door of the phone booth with the intention of escaping, but the gulls immediately crowd in front of the door and try to attack her. She swats them away and closes the door again, remaining inside the booth. She watches from the booth as a firetruck pulls up next to the gas station, two firemen try to put the fire out, the firemen are attacked and drop their hoses, and the hose wriggles around on the ground, spraying in all directions. It sprays against the side of the phone booth, and Melanie temporarily loses her view of the town. She regains her view to see a horse-drawn fruit cart swerving and tipping as the horses madly flee the scene. A man who is surrounded by seagulls runs and crashes into the side of the phone booth, and Melanie catches a glimpse of his bloodied and horrified face. The seagulls begin crashing into the booth much harder, and she opens the door again to try to escape, but is foiled again and retreats back into the phone booth. Outside, some men have picked up the hoses and continue trying to put the fire out. A seagull smashes into the side of the phone booth, and cracks the glass but does not break through it. Melanie turns away to shield herself from it, and another bird does the same thing on the opposite window. Mitch rushes over to the phone booth, opens the door from the outside, and pulls Melanie out. He rushes her back to the door of the restaurant, and they go inside.
Nobody appears to be inside the restaurant, and Melanie and Mitch seem worried by this, though it does not look like any birds have gotten inside. Mitch takes Melanie’s hand and leads her through the restaurant. They get to the back and find a group of women and children hiding in a hallway. Everyone looks accusingly at Melanie except Mrs. Bundy (the ornithologist), who faces the other way and refuses to look at them. The frightened mother stands, with tears brimming in her eyes, and asks Melanie, “why are they doing this?” She repeats her question and begins walking toward Melanie, telling her that the whole thing with the birds only started when Melanie arrived in Bodega Bay. She asks Melanie, “Who are you? What are you? Where did you come from?” as she slowly walks closer and closer to her. The scene is shot from Melanie’s point of view, and as the frightened mother gets closer, her face takes up the screen and her voice becomes more desperate. She tells Melanie that she thinks Melanie is the cause of the whole problem. She yells, “I think you’re evil! Evil!” and Melanie slaps her. The woman grabs her face, shocked, takes a breath, and begins calming down. Melanie is surprised at her own actions and shocked by the frightened woman, and takes a step backward as a few tears stream down her face. Deke comes rushing in, and tells everyone that it looks like the birds are leaving. Mitch and Melanie leave to pick up Cathy from Annie’s house, and the rest of the people in the restaurant run to the window to watch the birds fly away.
Analysis
The scene at the school opens with a wide shot of the whole street leading up to the school, as Melanie drives up the hill. This shot will later be mirrored when the birds emerge from behind the school building to cover the frame, and establishes a contrast between the two images that intensifies the horror of the second one. (This second image has become one of the most iconic images of the film, as children run screaming down the road and the crows rise from behind the building to darken the once sunny and calm frame.) Additionally, as Melanie approaches the building we are given an audible indication of lightness or calmness when we hear the children singing an upbeat, silly, children’s song. However, the song soon takes on a more sinister meaning as the camera closely tracks Melanie back outside the school and closes in on her from shot to shot as she sits on the bench and the crows gather behind her. Because the song continues in the background (though she is outside and far away) while the camera fixates on her, we understand there to be a connection between the unruly wife of the song and Melanie’s own untameable spirit. Because we see the crows gathering behind her as this goes on, we can also see a connection between her failure to adhere to expectations and the bird attacks. This scene and the children’s song are perhaps the strongest suggestion that the attacks are a retribution for her wild ways. Still, there are several holes in such a theory; for example, why would they attack Dan Fawcett if this were the case? Though some scenes, like this one, seem to point at a given motive behind the attacks, it seems unlikely that Hitchcock really intended to convey any such message.
The cutting between Melanie and the crows, as they slowly and quietly mass behind her while the children sing, builds tension and fear in the audience; this fear is matched on Melanie’s face when she finally notices them. When the children finally flee the school, the first shot is the only long and steady shot, in order to mirror the shot of Melanie’s initial approach, and Hitchcock then again uses rapid cuts between medium and close shots, as well as many tracking shots, to reflect the confusion and panic of the scene in his editing. Using children as the victims of a massive attack is again a way to increase feelings of anxiety in the audience, and position the birds as being stronger and taking advantage of human weaknesses. It may also draw a connection between the attacks and Cathy, which could support any of the theories that the lovebirds, which Cathy now owns, are somehow responsible for the attacks (whether the attacks happen because the lovebirds are a foreign species, or because they are caged, or whether the lovebirds themselves issue the attacks). Additionally, the glasses that shatter when Cathy’s friend falls are likely intended to hold a symbolic meaning, because of the way that Hitchcock zooms in and holds on them briefly amid the chaos. They are the ultimate representation of the birds attacking the weak or vulnerable—without her glasses, the friend is unable to see and thus to defend herself from the attacks. It may also explain that a goal or an effect of the bird attacks will be to revert society to a more primitive state, reducing technological advances that give humans an advantage over other animals. This detail would support an environmentalist reading of the film.
At the restaurant and the ensuing attack in the center of town the film escalates to its climax, both in the drama of the bird attacks and the paranoia and fear among the characters. The argument among the people in the restaurant demonstrates the absolute panic that the bird attacks have caused in the town, and their inability to understand the attacks mirrors the guessing game that the audience plays as we try to discern the meaning or motives behind the attacks. We then can gain a deeper understanding of Hitchcock’s intentions in obscuring any clear motive from the viewers: he wishes to bring the audience into the emotional atmosphere of the film by leaving us in a similarly disoriented state as the one in which his characters find themselves. By having several characters with different ideas argue about the attacks, he provides a means for making explicit a variety of feelings that the audience might have about the film. This rises to a fever pitch during the attack, when the frightened mother screams at Melanie that she thinks she is evil. The audience comes to see this woman’s verbal attack as ridiculous, overblown, and harmful, especially because it is shown opposite a tearful and frightened Melanie who is, herself, a victim. In this scene, then, any viewer who has been holding on to the idea that Melanie is responsible for the attacks will immediately become associated with this character and will begin to feel guilty for such a view. This provides us with a new reading of the attacks: they have no motive or meaning, and rather, Hitchcock aimed to maximize the horror by making it inexplicable. In the end, there is little as frightening as what is completely inexplicable.
Mrs. Bundy, of course, is the first character who explicitly articulates this idea that the attacks are senseless. As the ornithologist, she provides us with an authoritative voice that questions what possible motive the birds would have to attack, and makes Melanie realize that she indeed does not have any clear idea of why the birds are doing what they are doing. Her articulation of this point, however, is grounded in a firm disbelief that the events are happening at all, which also draws out the way in which such an attack could escalate while authority figures dismiss it (Al Malone is used similarly whenever he appears in the film). Mrs. Bundy also provides some supporting evidence of the attacks as a retribution for our degradation of the environment when she remarks that it is in fact humans who insist on ruining the planet. Though this seems to provide strong evidence hinting at Hitchcock’s intention, Mrs. Bundy is also meant to be a slightly ridiculous character who is too haughty and confident in her expertise and refuses to see things that are right in front of her. She also soon turns out to be quite wrong about the birds, so she would be an unlikely vehicle for the delivery of Hitchcock’s underlying intentions. Additionally, the drunk man in the scene provides a voice at the opposite end of the spectrum from her pragmatism in his exclamations that the end of the world is coming, and the contrast solidifies her position at the extreme. The reality is likely somewhere in between, where Melanie and Deke’s opinions stand—indeed, they are also visually shown standing between Ms. Bundy and the drunk in the bar, aligning the layout of the scene with what it symbolically conveys.
The references to war in this scene also suggest another interesting theory about the film—that the attacks, and the paranoia and fear, are meant to represent the Cold War and the threat of destruction at the hands of nuclear attack. In addition to the more overt connection between bird attacks from above and missile attacks from above, Ms. Bundy’s reference to humans making it difficult for life to exist might be a reference to the devastation made possible by nuclear devastation, as does the drunk’s exclamation about the end of the world. Further, people in the restaurant begin referring to the attacks as the “bird war” in this scene, and it is interesting to note that in the original script, though it was cut from the film, the cook follows his question about the war by saying, “Did the Russians…?” which demonstrates a verbal connection between the attacks and the Cold War (it may be that Hitchcock decided to cut this line so as to keep the connection from being too overt). Finally, Mrs. Bundy’s and Mr. Sholes’ comments that we would be hopeless if there actually were a united attack by the birds could reflect the hopelessness of the prospect of all-out nuclear war, which would likely result in the end of mankind. From such a reading, we can begin to see the attacks on children as references to the frightening and often talked about practice of bomb drills in schools, in which children would have to hide under their desks.
The attack at the center of town is the largest and most massive attack of the film, and represents the climax of the film’s central conflict. As soon as the attack starts and the man at the gas station is knocked over, it becomes clear that this will be the most devastating attack of the film yet—the gas spilling out onto the ground is an example of the rule of "Chekhov's gun" (where a weapon introduced into a narrative must at some point be used) so we expect it to cause a massive explosion and fire by the end of the scene. The rapid cuts between the fire and close shots of Melanie’s face, which changes to a new look of horror in each shot, is used to increase tension as the explosion progresses, just before stepping back to the larger view of the disaster from above. This cut to the aerial shot is abrupt and changes the mood rapidly, showing the event from a calmer, safer distance for a moment in order to give a false sense that the attack might be over, as people scramble on the ground to stop the fire. Soon, however, the gulls that fill the frame begin to build that tension back up, and indicate that the attack is far from over. It also gives us another shot from above, or from the perspective of the birds looking down on the town, that demonstrates the power of the birds over the humans in the film. During the rest of the attack, Hitchcock again uses rapid cutting and camera movements to contribute to a filmic disorientation that reflects the chaos of the scene. It helps to put us in Melanie’s place, as we see the events unfold from her point of view and become lost in the incident as the camera rapidly shows us a sequence of images from all around Melanie’s vantage point, as well as of her own escalating fear.
