Suspense: "The Birds," "Pyscho," and "Young & Innocent"

Throughout the semester, we have watched an abundance of Hitchcock films that have birds in them.The overarching conclusion is that Hitchcock is notorious for using birds.

This blog is going to focus on Hitchcock's three films: The Birds, Psycho, and
 Each of these three films use birds to help build suspense.

In the film Psycho, one of the main characters Norman Bates is a taxidermist. In several of the scenes, the birds he has taxidermied make an appearance in the film.

The image above was taken from the scene where Mariam is eating the sandwich and drinking the milk that Norman had prepared for her. During this scene, Norman comments on Mariam's eating habit "Mariam eats like a bird." In the corner of this image is an owl who has been stuffed with saw dust. The owl is very important in this scene. Owls are a bird species which are nocturnal and prey in the darkness. In this scene, a conclusion can be drawn that the owl is a metaphor for Norman. This owl builds suspense for the later scene because the audience can feel the tension and eeriness between Norman, the owl, and Mariam. When watching this film, I got an odd feeling about Norman and the stuffed owl. My feelings were later on proved to be true. Norman turns out to be a predator as he spies on Mariams, essentially hunts her and kills her in the shower. The audience then wonders what Norman is going to do later on in the film.

Towards the end of his film career, Hitchcock created the film The Birds. This film encapsulates everything about birds that we have learned and seen all semester. Time and time again, birds have made their reappearance. The Birds is a film that is entirely made up about the chaos, destruction and killing of birds, and death of birds. Birds themselves are mysterious creatures as there are many of them and they are chaotic and almost uncontrollable. Hitchcock uses birds throughout the entire film to create suspense and drive the film forward. The audience has no idea why the birds are attacking, who will die from the bird attacks, and when the next attack will be. The entire

This image comes from the film The Birds. Mid-way through the film, the birds attack the children at the school house. This image shows the damage and chaos of the birds flying around, attacking the children and Mariam. 

Another Hitchcock film that uses birds is Hitchcock's film Young and Innocent. When Robert Tisdall finds a washed up, dead body on the beach the camera shows sea gulls are flying in the air above the dead body on the  beach. The use of sea gulls in this film builds suspense. It builds suspense because the sea gulls flying around the beach are signaling death. This then leads to the audience questioning why is there a dead body on a beach, how did the body get there, who killed the woman and what are the importance of birds in this scene.

These films are only a few that use birds to build suspense.