Beat It, Essay: Music Is For The Birds

I've been taking a Music in Film class! I had to write an essay about a film score and because I have an insatiable need to stick it to the man, I wrote about The Birds, which has not a single note of written orchestration. Pray for me.

Update: For those of you who found this through Google, I got an "A" on the paper, so it's actually a solid model. Good luck!

The Prompt

Discuss the role of music in a single film created in 1970 or before.

The famed film composer Bernard Hermann is quite well known for having created some of the most memorable film scores in human history. After scoring the indelible classic Citizen Kane, his career took him even further when he was asked to pen the compositions for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. His use of shrill dissonance and solely string instrumentation was tremendously beneficial in putting the audience in the mindset of a psychotic killer. The theme for the shower scene is perhaps one of the most well-known film compositions in the entire world.

But one of Hermann’s other great compositional triumphs is hardly even a score at all, at least in the traditional sense. When he was asked to develop the sound for Hitchcock’s horror follow-up The Birds, he made the ingenious decision not to include a single piece of non-diegetic music. This worked perfectly because The Birds made a habit out of defying audience expectations: The plot of the entire first act is a decoy, turning what seemed like a screwball romantic comedy on its head once the first bird attacked. The Birds also exhibited an entirely unprecedented level of gore for the time, rendered in beautiful full color.

In every regard, The Birds was pushing the envelope and Hermann recognized the importance of keeping that quality consistent within the score. Where the audience, after decades of movie watching was expecting either a lush post-romantic score (assuming a romance) or a dissonant modern score (assuming a horror), what they got instead was absolutely nothing. Due to the almost unconscious nature of film music, most audience members wouldn’t have actively recognized the lack of a score but it would have continuously registered in the back of their minds, creating an unbearable psychological tension during the first act of the film, even before anything goes wrong.

This is where Hermann’s genius works its magic. Despite its technical lack of instrumentation, his silences work in the exact same manner as a traditional film score, playing with the audience’s preconceived notions of certain styles, motifs, and instrumental colors and their meanings within the context of cinema. A traditional film might use a sultry sax to signify a sexual scenario or a sweeping orchestra to denote an astounding act of heroism because it effortlessly puts the audience in the right mindset thanks to their experiences with similar techniques in previous films. It is this exact prior experience that Hermann exploits to create the oppressive atmosphere that haunts the entirety of the film.

Some might argue that Hermann’s work on The Birds isn’t a true score, but that is ignoring its base nature as a way of using music to manipulate an audience’s emotions. That is, in fact, exactly what Hermann is doing here, but simply in a wildly alternative format. And that argument ignores the presence of source music and sound composition, all of which was carefully selected by the composer himself for maximum effect and terror. Although sound design is somewhat out of the scope of this essay, Hermann’s use of flapping wings, clacking beaks, and avian squawks provides an unsettling rhythm and quasi-score of its own.

The two most important musical moments of the film are source music, impeccably chosen to break the silence at the two most opportune times to set the opposing tones of the beginning and middle of the film. The first, Debussy’s “Arabesque No. 1 in E” can be heard on the radio during the first, romantic, portion of the film. It highlights the elegant nature of Tippi Hedren’s character Melanie Daniels as well as the wistful romance with which she approaches her life. This song choice is immensely important because it comes early on in the film, lulling the audience into a false sense of security, both in terms of film composition (having heard an expected classical composition early on would make it that much more unbearable during the absence of regular score) and of movie tone (one of pure classical romance and the innocence of the era).

However, that security is shattered with the startling placement of the next musical piece. After already having an uncomfortable encounter with the business end of a seagull, Melanie Daniels is on edge and taking a smoke break outside of the local elementary school while she is waiting for her friend – a teacher – to get off of work.

During this scene, the children’s choir is singing “Rissle-dy Rossle-dy,” a derivation of a traditional Scottish folk song while black crows slowly gather on a playground behind an unsuspecting Melanie. 

This comes after a long period in which the film has been utterly devoid of music and the innocence and joy of the song provides a modicum of relief in the listener. That is, until the murder of crows begins to roost. With the arrival of each additional crow and the threat of an impending attack, the children’s song grows more and more eerie, replacing the pleasant tone with the terrible potential of the slaughter of unaware innocents.

This is the most effective scene in the whole film, entirely because of Hermann’s unprecedented skill in using music (and its absence) to manipulate an audience. It’s absolutely brilliant, using the infrequent source music and ample expectations due to cinematic precedents in order to to play the audience like a fiddle – another alternative form of orchestration. Hermann will forever be remembered for his contributions to Kane and Psycho, but The Birds is a sonic experience of unparalleled skill so subtle that it will rarely be appreciated to the extent that it deserves.

What should be one of the most memorable scores in human history will perhaps never attain such status due to the completely subliminal effect it creates. Nobody even realizes that it exists! That is the beauty of Hermann’s work on this film and it’s certainly no mistake that he was paid the full salary of a traditional composer.

Word Count: 1047

A Flock of Seagulls

Year: 1963

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Suzanne Pleshette

Run Time: 1 hour 59 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

The second part of my horror class' Hitchcock Halloween Double Feature was his highly divisive second horror feature The Birds. In my experience, The Birds is a pea soup horror movie - you either love it or you hate it. There's no in between. As evidenced by my inclusion of the film in my Five Scariest Movies article, I am firmly in the "love it" camp.

For most pre-1970's horror movies, viewers are advised to view them from the perspective of the audiences of the time. "If you think about what movie effects were like in the 30's, you'd be totally terrified of Frankenstein/Psycho/The Creature From the Black Lagoon too, man!" Well that's all fine and dandy, but sometimes I don't want to watch horror as an academic. I came to be scared, not to imagine somebody else being scared.

The Birds is one of the few films between cinema's inception and, let's say Night of the Living Dead in 1968 that still holds up tremendously under the scrutiny of the jaded eye of the modern horror fan. Some of the effects do show their age, but this film is a showcase of some of the best composite cinematography available at the time. It's not modern perhaps, but it's still great workmanship and consistently exciting.

No, those birds weren't there. No, I don't care. I'd still run.

The trick of The Birds lies in its plotting. Melanie Daniels (beautiful newcomer Tippi Hedren) is a young and mischievous San Francisco socialite who meets handsome swain Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) by chance in a bird shop. She pretends to be an employee for sh*ts and gigs, but her ability to aid him in procuring a pair of lovebirds for his kid sister is impeded by her utter lack of knowledge about bird species.

The two quarrel good humoredly and Mitch leaves empty handed. Because her schedule was free that weekend, Melanie decided to purchase a set of birds and deliver them personally to the man with a note admonishing his rudeness. When she discovers he's on vacation she follows him up the coast to the beautiful town of Bodega Bay. Through a series of misunderstandings and good-natured lies, her prank goes too far as she ends up chartering a rowboat, traveling across the bay, and sneaking into his mother's house to deliver the birdcage.

Basically, for the first half hour or so, The Birds is a zany romantic comedy until... a lone seagull swoops down from the sky and claws Melanie's forehead. What follows is a series of increasingly vicious attacks by different flocks of birds that continues throughout the movie. The delightful and charming opening of the film was but a sham to suck you in, get you involved with the characters, and then run them through a conveyor belt of never-ending terror.

But thanks to the amount of time we get to spend with the actual people in the plot as opposed to just the horrors, the film is also successful as a character study of the interactions of a broken family [Mitch is supporting his widowed mother (Jessica Tandy) and his little sister (Veronica Cartwright) on his own] and a woman who's trying to find her way in life.

So we have this opening act of stellar old-fashioned romantic comedy followed terrifying bird attacks combined with a hearty family drama. And the biggest surprise? The gore effects are good too! Evidently the deterioration of film censorship came a long way in the wake of Psycho leading to grisly scenes like the neighbor with his eyes pecked out.

Lazy bum didn't even change out of his pajamas.

The success of The Birds with its abrupt tonal shifts and delicate juggling act of themes lies entirely on the backs of three people: Alfred Hitchcock (obviously), sound designer Bernard Hermann, and Tippi Hedren.

Alfred Hitchcock's talent at manufacturing suspense is a given, of course, but it is commendable that after having so thoroughly proven himself with previous films, he still sought out ways to make his next movie even bigger and better. The lengthy attack scenes in The Birds are like Hitchcock wrapping his hands around your neck, pausing for a minute, and then slowly squeezing until you're gasping for air.

One sequence in particular in which a murder of crows attacks a schoolhouse is terrifying, not necessarily because of the fact that murderous (ha) birds are attacking young children, but rather because of the fact that we see them slowly gathering behind Tippi Hedren as she obliviously smokes a cigarette.

We know what's going to happen. And there's nothing we can do to stop it. The pressure builds and builds until it finally explodes into a cacophony of squawks, beaks, and wings. The slow boil approach that Hitchcock uses here more or less erases the inherent silliness of the film's premise, allowing us time to ponder just how many uses a sharp bird's beak might be put to. Or just how many birds there are in the world. Or the fact that random acts of nature similar to (but perhaps slightly less preposterous than) this happen all the time.

This slow easing into the more absurd elements is handled so masterfully that even when the birds blow up a gas station, it is still closer to Psycho than Birdemic.

Believe you me, you see this and you're not gonna be thinking "This is a ridiculous plot point." You'll be sprinting away as fast as you can.

But enough about Hitchcock. Everybody know's he's great. Bernard Hermann, sound designer and composer of the score for Psycho, plays an equally important role in the overall impact of the film. He was originally hired to write a score, but he thought it would be best to keep the film absolutely devoid of music (save for a hauntingly creepy moment set during the children's choir class).

Instead the audience's ears are buffeted with a hurricane of squawks and flaps that underly and occasionally overtake the action in most every scene. This attack on the eardrums is unsettling in the highest degree and keeps one firmly planted in the universe of the movie no matter how much they might want to get away.

And you do want to get away.

Which brings us to Tippi Hedren. The star of the show. Sure, Hermann and Hitchcock did the grunt work, providing a magnificent framework for this woman to thrive, but without her star turn as Melanie, the film would have been rudderless and careening wildly.

Melanie Daniels is a human Barbie doll. She's gorgeous and fabulous. She's rich, playful, and irresponsible. She grew up toying without people, paying no mind to the consequences. But after a media snafu in Rome (and through the cavalcade of bird attacks), she has become unmoored, searching for her place on the shelf of life.

Melanie is a wounded woman. She was once free as a bird (geddit) but she needs to find a place to land on her feet.

She supports charities. She's putting a poor Third World child through school. But to what ends should she dedicate her characteristic passion? With an uncaring father and an absentee mother, she has never known the unconditional love of another person, which during the course of her adventure she finds not in Mitch but in his initially untrusting mother.

Melanie's complicated personality layers and deep hurt are handled with great care by Ms. Hedren who puts in one of the single best performances in a horror film that I've ever seen. Equal parts blasé, fabulous, vulnerable, and tenacious, this woman is a masterpiece of character, both in writing and performance. Without her, The Birds is nothing.

Such fabulous. Much appreciate.

It's true that The Birds is much less monumental and groundbreaking than Psycho, but in my opinion, it is the better movie in terms of tension, thrills, and character development.

I have opinions, so sue me.

One last thing before I go (I'm about to lay down some Film Theory 101 on y'all so the uninterested can feel free to skip to the end): The nature of the bird attacks is a mystery. Is it because we're polluting the Earth? Is it because Melanie is a classless ho (as some of my classmates seem to think - they are not very nice people)? Is it because of the two lovebirds who remain in their cage in the Brenner house?

Who know?

That's the nature of nature - to be unfathomable and illogical. Things happen. Some of them are good. Some of them are bad. Some of them will peck out your eyes. And that is infinitely more terrifying than some half-baked environmental treatise.

I would like to think that my theory is supported in the scene where Melanie is trapped in a phone booth outside the diner. Around her she sees representations of fire (the gas station explosion), water (a stray fire hose is mucking up the works), air (the birds, naturally), and earth (an overturned cart of cabbages). These four natural elements present in the same scene imply that the bird attacks are merely a force of nature - elemental and inescapable.

And that's why I'm afraid.

TL;DR: The Birds is Hitchcock's best horror film, hands down.
Rating: 9/10
Word Count: 1573