New Topics: Birds

For anyone that is an Alfred Hitchcock fan, or having to do a study for a class (in my case) I have learned that everything that Hitchcock does is for a reason.  It makes watching his film fun and intriguing to watch for all the little things in his movies and try to figure them out.  One occurring theme in Hitchcock films are the the appearance of birds.  In Hitchcock films birds represent chaos.  One of Hitchcock’s later films “The Birds” is all about birds causing chaos.  But that will be discussed a different time.  In this blog I will be discussing the appearance of birds in the Hitchcock films; The Lady Vanishes, Young and Innocent (The Girl was Young) and finally Secret Agent.

First, In the film, “The Lady Vanishes”.  Watching the film you do not see any bird appearances from the first half of the film.  In the scene when the birds first appear, the two main characters, Iris, and Gilbert find themselves looking for the missing women in the back of a train.  In the back of the train is where everyone’s luggage would be.  There are crates boxes, and luggage everywhere.  Also there are animals stored in the back of the train.  As Iris and Gilbert find a clue to the missing women, one of the men behind the scheme finds them and a fight scene engages.  As they start to find, a cage of doves bursts open and start to fly all over the place.  As stated before when birds appear in a Hitchcock film that represents chaos.  As chaos erupts with a fight, so do the birds.  The birds stay around for the remainder of the fight.

In the Hitchcock film “Young and Innocent” birds have an important roll from the very begging of the film.  However instead of birds appearing during a scene that revolves around chaos, Hitchcock strategically place the shot of the of birds before the chaos happens.  To the average eye (much like myself) the scene shows seagulls flocking around at the beach, and thinking nothing of the sort.  However soon do we find out that a woman’s body is washed ashore the beach.  Hitchcock wanted to foreshadow the near, crazy events to come with the showing of the birds.

Above is a picture showing the birds on the beach before the body was washed ashore.

Finally, in Hitchcock’s `1936 film “Secret Agent” birds have an occurrence again.  The two main characters, The General, and Ashenden approach a church looking to kill a man in there.  When entering three different birds fly out.  This case was much like the example from the “Young and Innocent”.  The birds were foreshadowing the craziness to come.  Right before they were going to kill the man with a knife of all things… they find that he has already been strangled.  When watching this scene and seeing the birds fly before they enter the church, I knew something was going to happen.  Now that I know what I am going to do the rest of my blogs about, I look forward to watching more Hitchcock film’s in search of all those pesky birds.

Alfred Hitchcock Cameo Appearances

Alfred Hitchcock revolutionized film making has we know it.  He was a pioneer of film making.  One unique feature Hitchcock had was him, himself appears in the majority of his films as a guest cameo.  This playful act became one of Hitchcock’s signature gestures in his films.  This gesture was a bit of fun for Hitchcock to appear in his master pieces, also it made it for fun for all the fans to try and seek out the man himself during his films.  The trick with of trying to find Hitchcock in his films was that he wouldn’t always appear in person.  In some instances he appears for slight seconds, or the mastermind himself would appear in pictures or even silhouettes that have bloggers fighting over to this day, but those will be explained later.  In this blog post, I will be talking about how Hitchcock appeared in The Lodger.

The Lodger was Hitchcock’s first ever film made.  It was gritty and silent.  The film was produced in 1927, so the quality of the film was… lets be honest it was awful.  However because it was his first film I suppose Hitchcock decided to make it special and appear in the film twice.  The first appearance he sitting at a desk in the newsroom.  The tricky thing about this scene is that Hitchcock’s back is to the camera making it nearly impossible for the audience and fans to see that he was in the film.  It was not until years later when Hitchcock exposed his secret in an interview.  This was the beginning of a new era for films, and ticks.  Hitchcock appears later in The Lodger in the mob scene next to Detective Joe who’s bearing the lodger’s weight on the fence by holding his arms.  Although both of these scenes are brief they are the start of Hitchcock being in his own films.