This blog post analyzes how Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds depicts human common sense, ignorance, and the psychology of fear, exploring the message the director sought to convey through this work.
Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds (1963)’ uses the sudden, unexpected behavior of ‘birds’—creatures we believe we know well—as its subject matter to depict the terror that arises from the utterly incomprehensible. The characters in the film state that birds lack the intelligence to act in organized flocks, do not interact with birds of different species, and possess no reason to harbor ill will toward humans. This represents the common sense humans typically hold about birds. Humans firmly believe this to be true because birds have always behaved within these boundaries. However, the moment this common sense is overturned—the moment they become utterly incomprehensible—we inevitably panic.
The film depicts precisely this moment. Birds, which should be simple and harmless, suddenly exhibit bizarre behavior beyond our understanding, attacking in swarms. No reason for this could be discerned. At this point, the film transcends mere horror to reveal human ignorance and limitations. When the common sense, reason, and scientific knowledge we so heavily rely on all crumble, how vulnerable and defenseless do humans become? Hitchcock forces us to confront the limits of our knowledge through this situation. When the characters in the film panic in the face of the birds’ attack and cannot explain its cause, they realize how superficial their understanding of nature and the world truly is. Because they don’t know the reason, because they cannot comprehend it, the fear is amplified to its utmost. If there is absolutely no way to know the reason, then they must be exposed to the inexplicable without being able to devise any countermeasures or control the situation, leading to extreme anxiety and terror.
This film depicts this psychology while simultaneously exploiting it to maximize the horror direction. Hitchcock doesn’t rely solely on simple visual shocks for fear. He creates situations that stimulate human instinctive anxiety and gradually amplifies that anxiety. By providing limited information, he maximizes the tension and fear felt by the audience. When visual information is blocked, and we hear only the countless signs of birds and their fierce chirping, or when we are inside a house with all windows blocked, filled only with the sound of birds, our fear doubles. This is because when external or visual information is blocked, the parts of the current situation that remain unclear increase.
At the film’s end, Melanie’s action of opening the attic door on the second floor to investigate an unknown sound while the Machin family slept all seemed incomprehensible at first. Her insistence on checking, despite the obvious danger, felt like a cliché often seen in horror films. However, considering how a real person might behave in such a situation, it seemed closer to a state where instinct or emotion overrides rational judgment. That is, it seems Melanie was driven more by anxiety and curiosity about the unidentified sound than by the rational judgment that she might be attacked. The urge to understand the incomprehensible is a fundamental human instinct.
The attitude displayed by the minor characters in this film towards the bizarre phenomenon of crows or seagulls attacking humans was quite striking. When Melanie borrowed a phone at the restaurant to relay her witness account to her father, those around her picked up limited information from her voice and became interested in this bizarre phenomenon. Among them was a drunkard proclaiming the end of the world, and someone who declared all birds were filthy and should be killed. Most people refused to believe Melanie because they hadn’t witnessed the ‘birds’ sudden behavior’ themselves. Her words were simply too far removed from their common sense.
Even after seeing the bodies killed by the birds, the police dismissed it as a murder case. The fisherman, who had witnessed the bird attack and suffered damage, rationalized it away as his own mistake. This appears to be an attempt to interpret an inexplicable phenomenon within the confines of their own logic and common sense. These scenes reveal how self-centered humans are, trapped within their own knowledge and experience. Through this, Hitchcock exposes human vulnerability and blind spots. The grandmother, who studied ornithology, firmly believes in her scientific knowledge and insists that ‘birds’ would never attack humans without reason. Watching this grandmother, I wondered if science might be fulfilling the role of superstition and religion in the modern age. This world is filled with countless unpredictable and elusive things, and because humans feel anxiety towards them, they sought to explain them through myths and religion. Couldn’t science and common sense also be inheriting the role of filling this void? Ultimately, science might not be so different from superstition; it could simply be a more advanced form of belief.
In the final ending scene, Cassie says, “The lovebird didn’t do anything wrong,” and declares she’ll take it. Her line hit me like a blow to the head. Having watched birds rampage throughout the film, I felt uneasy, assuming the parakeet—being just another bird—could suddenly turn dangerous. Just like the other adults in the story. Yet, by the film’s end, the parakeet had done nothing wrong. I had fallen into the trap of overgeneralization, fixated only on the aggressive behavior of the other birds and assuming the parakeet, being a ‘bird,’ might also show aggression. This shows how humans, when gripped by fear and anxiety, tend to overinterpret even minor information and act irrationally. Understanding this psychological mechanism is one of the film’s key lessons. Seeing myself in this situation, I was struck anew by how humans feel fear and anxiety toward the unknown, often thinking in highly irrational ways. It struck me that anxiety can cloud reason, leading one to blame even those who are innocent. Just as the woman in the restaurant blamed everything on Melanie and conducted a witch hunt. Surely young Cassie, witnessing the same scene in the same situation, would also feel terror. How could she possibly say something like “the lovebird is innocent”? Perhaps a child’s eyes, which simply see the world as it is, can be more upright than an adult’s, who views the world buried in common sense.
This film excelled in its use of the theme of fear toward the unknown and its direction that exploited such human psychology. Aside from the disappointment felt from the clumsy CG and makeup, likely due to the era’s limited technical capabilities, it was a film with few flaws. The story was simple and the pacing smooth, and the vintage color palette and visual aesthetics felt refreshing to me, living in this modern era. Above all, the director’s skill in taking the most common creature around us – the ‘bird’ – and using it to draw out various aspects of humanity was nothing short of remarkable, leaving me in awe.
