The Birds: Film vs. Text

Bird attacks; they come to mind so rarely that they’re never taken seriously, much less seen as a threat. That is, until someone’s neighbor is killed, someone’s friend, or someone’s child. Until a little girl, walking home from school, turns around to see a flock of birds streaming toward her. Not attacking by accident, but rather driven by a thirst for blood, one so surprising that no one would have ever considered it reality until that very moment. This idea may seem crazy, that birds would even think to attack people, and that’s what makes it perfect for a horror film, more specifically for Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”. However, killer birds weren’t originally Hitchcock’s idea. He bought rights to the story from Daphne du Maurier, an English author of the time. And even though the frame of “The Birds” film was built from du Maurier’s novella, Hitchcock proceeded to take creative license.

Hitchcock bought rights to “The Birds” from Daphne du Maurier because he wanted to use the concept of bird attacks in his movie. However, this concept isn’t the only similarity between the two. Du Maurier and Hitchcock use a similar theme, mood, setting, and parts of the plot. Both the novella and movie take place in isolated seashore towns with small populations. Since both the novella and the film focus on birds attacking people, they have a common theme and mood; Hitchcock and du Maurier’s works are similarly suspenseful, full of character choices, and contain many life versus death situations. In addition to this, Hitchcock and du Maurier included comparable events in their plotline. Hitchcock and du Maurier’s characters notice that there are more birds are in the sky than usual and that the birds only attack during certain parts of the day. In addition to this, the birds have similar actions, as they kill secondary characters and make their way into the house in both the movie and novella. Nat and Mitch, du Maurier and Hitchcock’s protagonists, take...