Camille Paglia’s The Birds: A Hitchcock Masterpiece

In her penetrating analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), Camille Paglia interprets the film as a masterpiece of modern myth—a work that exposes the primal forces lurking beneath civilized life. She argues that The Birds transcends mere suspense or allegory; it is a symbolic meditation on nature, sexuality, and apocalypse.

Paglia situates the film within Hitchcock’s larger vision of erotic tension and moral ambiguity, but she sees The Birds as his most metaphysical creation. Nature, in her reading, is not benevolent but pagan and amoral—a vast, unconscious power that erupts into human order. The sudden avian attacks represent the collapse of rationality before the mystery and terror of the natural world.

At the film’s center is Melanie Daniels, played by Tippi Hedren, whom Paglia reads as a glamorous pagan goddess—stylish, autonomous, and emotionally opaque. Her arrival in the coastal town of Bodega Bay disturbs the fragile equilibrium of its repressed inhabitants. Paglia likens Melanie’s beauty and sexual independence to the disruptive archetypes of myth—figures like Circe or Lilith—whose presence awakens chaos.

The escalating bird assaults, then, symbolize both ecological revenge and erotic punishment: nature striking back against the human attempt to control it. Paglia reads the film’s open ending—not with moral closure but with dread-filled silence—as a modernist gesture of cosmic humility.

There are so many layers to the story including the manner in which Hitchcock seamlessly inserts various interpretations of the meaning of this avian chaos. In one scene Mrs. Bundy, an elderly ornithologist, takes a contrarian stance, saying, "Birds have been on this planet, Miss Daniels, since Archaeopteryx; a hundred and forty million years ago. Doesn't it seem odd that they'd wait all that time to start a - a war against humanity?"

Well, yes, it does seem odd, but can someone else explain what is happening? Another character tells everyone in the diner that it's the end of the world. Considering that there are more than 100 billion birds and only a few billion humans, this would not be a war many of us would be eager to fight.

Painting by the author

Ultimately, Paglia regards The Birds as a work of religious power, though without theology—a revelation of the pagan sublime. Hitchcock, she suggests, understood that terror and beauty spring from the same source, and that civilization rests upon forces it can neither master nor fully understand.

In Paglia’s reading, The Birds becomes not just a thriller, but a modern myth of nature’s return—a confrontation with the ancient gods we thought we’d outgrown. 

Paglia's book belongs to a series of BFI Film Classics. Whereas most of this 110-page volume is a scene by scene account of the film, nearly every observation contains revelations of references to previous Hitchcock films, Hollywood history, mythology and literature. 

If interested, the entirety can be found online here, though I myself felt it compelling enough to purchase it for my library. (Belated birthday present.) 

Once you've read the book, I'm certain you will be compelled to see the movie again as I was.  

URL for the online version of this book: https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9781838719388_A39237384/preview-9781838719388_A39237384.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Hitchcock's Rope: Morality, Guilt and the Tension of Secrets

Photo by Mockup Graphics on Unsplash

Monday evening the film Rope was on one of the cable networks, and even though I've seen this Jimmy Stewart classic several times I couldn't help but watch it yet again. What makes it a great film isn't just the acting and the dialogue, but also the psychological probing and collision of philosophical ideas that director Hitchcock explores.

Based on Patrick Hamilton's book by the same name, it later became a play before being adapted to film in 1948. It's a story of two young men, Brandon Shaw and Phillip Morgan, who strangle their friend David Kentley and then invite his friends and family over for dinner. The body is hidden in a chest in the middle of the room, and the two men pretend that David is still alive while offering various suggestions for his absence.

One of the guests is Rupert Cadell, a philosophy professor whom Shaw and Morgan admired when they were his students at University. Brandon is proud of what they have done, Phillip is rattled by the terror of being found out. It's one thing to imagine doing something audacious, quite another thing to actually do it. 

When David Kentley fails to show up for the party, Rupert begins to suspect something is amiss. Little by little the pressure is on, and Phillip begins to sweat. As the evening unfolds, Rupert's suspicions feel a little like thumbscrews being applied by a master tormentor. 

Brandon is so proud of his "achievement" that he's not concerned about Rupert's inquisitiveness. Phillip, however, begins drinking heavily to calm his nerves. Like a bloodhound, once Rupert is on the trail he's determined to follow it wherever it leads. When he finally discovers Kentley's body, the story is not yet over. Brandon points out how Professor Cadell's own words were what inspired him. 

And what were these words? Rupert had presented Nietzsche's concept of the Ubermensch, the "Superman." The Superman is not constrained by the conventional morality of the common man. Brandon justified their murdering someone as a philosophical decision, their way of demonstrating their superiority, that they belonged to the class of "exceptional people."

For Brandon, committing the perfect murder was something akin to an art project. The flawless execution of his idea was his way of proving his eminence. Living inside the bubble of his imagination, he assumed Rupert would actually appreciate his achievement.

Both perpetrators fell victim to the self-deception that they could detach themselves from the consequences of their actions. Guilt has a corrosive effect on one's conscience, and as the party proceeded it became increasingly difficult to hold normal conversations. As Neil Young once sang. "How slow and slow and slow it goes to mend the tear that always shows."

In past viewings, I focused on the masterful manner in which Hitchcock built suspense. Also, the way he creates situations in which everything occurs within a tight space. Lifeboat is an example of this, as is Rear Window. In the latter, as in Rope, there is a sense in which the audience is present in the room, watching voyeuristically.

The story explores power and manipulation as well. Paul Tournier's The Strong and the Weak examines how people react differently to external circumstances. Brandon's dominance is clear, and Phillip goes along with Brandon's smooth-talking persuasive arguments. How many people have "gone along" with things they felt uncomfortable with, that violated their foundational beliefs because they failed to be strong, failed to take a stand? Whether it be a gang or a simply a relationship, things get messy when values are at odds. In the end, both characters will suffer the same consequences and be held accountable for their crime. 

We can pity Phillip but in a court of law he was an accessory to murder and likely will not get a break in the courts.

* * *

Postscript
In 1979-80 I met a man who had been an accessory to murder. I was in Puerto Rico at the time. His uncle had planned to murder a man in Chicago and the nephew was used to lure the victim into an alley where the uncle took the man's life. Both the uncle and his nephew, whom I will call Antonio here, went to prison. Antonio's wife, a strong Christian, visited him every day no matter the weather. (She had to take a bus and walk miles to get there and home.) Her sacrificial love broke his heart and he gave his life to the Lord. When I met him he had a beautiful spirit and was dedicated to helping others to make a different choice from the one he made years earlier with his uncle. The hardships he'd endure, his wife's love and the mercy of God changed him on the inside. He approached life with humility because of what he had been through.

There's a Middle Eastern proverb that goes like this: The same sun that hardens clay melts wax. We all make mistakes and sometimes especially bad choices. How we respond determines the "what next" of our own lives.

It would be interesting to see how the story of Rupert, Brandon and Phillip plays out. One of these young men may become hardened bitterness whereas the other's eyes are opened and sees things in a new way. Perhaps Rupert will write a book that addresses these issues, that counters the creeping cynicism and amorality fostered by Nietzsche, Existentialism and (later) post-modernism.

What are your thoughts on this?

Hitchcock's Rope a Prescient Foreshadowing of Our Current Crisis

"We agreed that there was was only one crime either of us could commit, the crime of making a mistake. Being weak is a mistake."--Brandon

It's a relatively short film by Hollywood standards, but Hitchcock's Rope has all the elements you want in a good suspense story.

In the very first minute of the film two friends--Brandon and Philip--strangle a third friend David Kentley with a rope and hide his body in a chest. This takes place just minutes before the first guests are slated to arrive for a party that will take place in this very room, with David's body right there in their New York City apartment. The guests include David's father, his fiancee Janet and, most significantly, their former college housemaster Rupert Cadell, played by Jimmy Stewart.

I'd seen the film several times over the course of my life, but current events stirred me to want to see it again.

The set itself had moving walls that could be adjusted as the camera rolled.
The body of David was placed inside the chest where the feast was spread
there in the foreground.

One of the interesting features of several Hitchcock films in this period of his career was the attempt to create a confined space where all the action takes place. Lifeboat was such an endeavor as was Rear Window, with Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly, his most successful. The former takes place in a lifeboat, the latter in an apartment overlooking the open courtyard of an apartment complex. The characters in the lifeboat are stuck in the ocean, the main character in Rear Window is bedridden after badly breaking his femur.

What I find interesting in the Wikipedia account regarding Rope is how much of the discussion has to do with the manner in which it was produced and the critical reception (lukewarm) with little real investigation into what I consider the most significant aspect of this film: the philosophical issue that generated this situation.

When the young men were in college there had been philosophical discussions about Nietzsche's Übermensch and De Quincey's Art of Murder, which they interpreted like this. In Nietzsche's argument, the rules that apply to the "common herd" do not apply to the superior men. Combine that with De Quincey's notion that murder can be a work of art and you've got the setup for the murder of David Kentley.

For Brandon, the killing was exhilarating, and indeed an artistically executed masterpiece of design. Philip, on the hand, immediately begins inwardly crumbling, cognizant that this idea in theory was absurd to carry out.

Brandon has the time of his life bringing candles, plates, food and silverware to the living room and placing them directly on the chest with the body in it. The irony here is that the conversation keeps returning to the corpse, or rather, to why David is late to his own party. (Inside joke: he is not absent.)

Though the other guests seem to be oblivious to the clues, Rupert can see that Brandon and Philip are behaving oddly, each in their own way. Philip is drinking heavily and stressing out, Brandon is exhibiting a certain bravado as if he just conquered San Juan Hill.

Brandon even dares to start a discussion on this topic. "I've always wished for more artistic talent. Well, murder can be an art, too. The power to kill can be just as satisfying as the power to create."

David's mother laughs it off, and a little verbal tussle passes between a few of the guests but it's just another passing moment.

As the guests depart, Rupert Cadell takes a fedora out of the closet thinking it his, but then sees the initials D.K. inside the hat. His suspicions are confirmed that something fishy had been going on, but he leaves without saying anything so that he can return to confront the young men with no one else around.

When he returns, Brandon doesn't want to take any chances and pockets a pistol, just in case. As Chekhov famously instructed, you don't put a pistol into the story unless you're going to use it.

The dialogue here is instructive, I believe.

Brandon: Ideas of right and wrong are for the intellectually inferior and don't apply to the intellectually superior.

Rupert: You've given my words a meaning I never dreamed of. Tonight you've made me ashamed of every concept I've ever had of superior or inferior beings. By what right did you feel you deserve to be superior. You've murdered, you've strangled the life out of someone who loved.

Rupert is stunned, horrified and deeply ashamed, realizing that Brandon and Phillip used his own rhetoric to rationalize this senseless act.

* * * *

The gig is up. (L to R) John Dall, Jimmy Stewart, Farley Granger

Rupert disavows all his previous talk of superiority and inferiority, and after a struggle he acquires the gun and shoots the two young men. No, just kidding. He does manage to secure the gun though and uses it to fire three shots out the window to attract attention. As the police arrive--we hear sirens approaching outside--Rupert sits on a chair next to the chest, Phillip begins to play the piano and Brandon continues to drink.

APPLICATION
I have been thinking a lot about the riots and violence taking place these past two months. I've tried to understand what's going on, why so many people are calling for revolution. I'm fully cognizant that so many of our systems are broken, and understand the criticisms. It is the notion of total revolution that concerns me. I don't believe it is rhetoric. When I read what many of the protesters are writing on Twitter and Reddit, they seem quite serious that their intent is nothing less than overthrowing the whole kit and caboodle. And I believe I understand why (to some extent).

When I was in high school, the team teachers in our U.S. History class did something quite intriguing. They taught U.S. history from the point of view of those who were disenfranchised (the indigenous peoples), and how we acquired lands from Mexico, France, Spain through various wars and ventures. We learned about manipulations and machinations, how Southern wealth was created by the utilization of slave labor, all justified with platitudes.

Turning everything around may have been useful and important, but the 50 years reiteration of this pattern of talk, when overindulged, leaves citizens more ashamed of their country than proud and fails to produce any vestige of patriotic feeling if taken too much to heart.

The net result is a generation that can feel like this: "There's nothing worth defending here. Let the Revolution begin. Let them overthrow this heap of dung."

But is that really what our teachers and academics wanted? Many may well have had quite patriotic feelings, but were seeking to put a perspective on things so we are more humble about our history. Like Rupert, they were discussing ideas, but not really anticipating the consequences. "You're giving my words meanings I never dreamed of," Rupert says to Brandon at one point.

America has helped more people and nations than any nation in history. The whole notion of re-building the economies of countries who fought against you in wars is historically unheard of. How many countries have started a Peace Corps to help impoverished nations in other corners of the world?

Of all the critics, I won't say I have been foremost, but I admit I've been one who's been vocal. I do not believe in "My country right or wrong." The Old Testament prophets were compelled to speak when their leaders were out of alignment with justice and doing what was right. I've never believed in the notion that a revolution would be nothing less than a disaster. I'm old fashioned but "if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow."

I share all this because I believe America, specifically the ideals upon which it was imperfectly founded, is worth defending. Destruction is always easier than building something new. There will never be a perfect world, but we can all try to contribute to make this one better.

EPILOGUE
Whereas this film is just a story, it reflects events that have happened in real life. Progressive intellectuals in the 20s and 30s felt that something needed to be done to purify the human race, to clean up the gene pool. Through aggressive lobbying they managed to get eugenics laws passed in 33 states. This bit of our history was all documented. 66,000 people were sterilized, some for as senseless a thing as being a runaway.

How much of what is going on in the global lockdown is the result of a larger chess game being played by power players? What are the belief systems currently at war in all this multi-layered hotbed of conflicting interpretations of events on all sides? What's really going on?

Related Links
Bad Ideas: The Eugenics Movement In America
Eugenics, Revisited
He Who Controls the Narrative Controls the People

Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Missing. A Movie Review

The formula comes in a variety of forms. Let's look at three variations on the theme.

SPOILER ALERT
I will be sharing info on all three films as if you've seen them.

The Man Who Knew Too Much

In this 1956 Hitchcock thriller, a doctor (Jimmy Stewart) and his wife, the popular singer Jo Conway McKenna (Doris Day) are traveling in Morocco with their young son. On a bus from Casablanca to Marrakesh they meet a Frenchman named Louis Bernard. Bernard is friendly but his answers to questions seem evasive, leaving Jo suspicious of the fellow. It's a quick setup, creating suspense in what appears to be an otherwise innocuous and casual situation.

As it turns out, there's much more going on than they realized. When Bernard is later stabbed in the back in the marketplace (literally, not figuratively as in office politics) he discloses a secret to Dr. McKenna that there's going to be an assassination attempt of a person of high importance. The stakes are raised when the McKenna's son is kidnapped so that they will not interfere with what has been planned. How ironic that the man of whom she'd been suspicious turned out to be the good guy, the couple into whose care she trusted her son were criminals.

Plot: Ordinary people inadvertently get caught up in a much bigger situation.
Quest: How find their son AND stop the assassination.
Clue: Ambrose Chappel.

Marathon Man

The movie's tagline blurb reads, "A graduate history student is unwittingly caught in the middle of an international conspiracy involving stolen diamonds, an exiled Nazi war criminal, and a rogue government agent."

Babe Levy (Dustin Hoffman) is a graduate student at Columbia University and also a marathon runner. His brother, he believes, is an oil company executive. He doesn't realize that his brother, Henry James Levy, is actually a government agent in a secret agency. The truth comes out when his brother comes to Babe's apartment to tell him something as he is dying from a knife wound. The brother dies before he can reveal anything.

Babe is interrogated by police and then some other people from the agency. No one knows whatever it was that his brother sought to share, yet the bad guys believe he knows more and are determined to find out what it was.

EdNote: There's a torture scene in this film that gave me nightmares that I have not watched it since. i.e. it's not my favorite movie but memorably represents the genre.

Plot: Ordinary person inadvertently caught up in a much bigger situation.
Quest: How to stay alive and find out what's really going on.
Clue: A key.

Missing

A powerful expose of America's dark doings in the September 1973 coup d'etat in Chile. An idealistic young writer disappears. Beth Horman, his wife (Sissy Spacek) and his dad Ed Horman (Jack Lemmon) have the same aim, but there's immense tension because Ed believes the Americans are the good guys, and Beth distrusts everything they say.

Plot: A young writer inadvertently crosses paths with the wrong people and later disappears.
Quest: Wife and father do all they can to learn where he is, whether he's alive or not.
Clues: Many, with red herrings everywhere.

* * * *
This is Greek director Costa-Gavras' American debut and it is spot on. The beauty of this film is that it weaves three points of view into one story and how the sparks fly as a result. The three perspectives are these. Beth is cynical about what our government claims and sees the lying clear as day. Ed believes the U.S. is a good country and that by trusting the authorities he will get to the bottom of this. The embassy authorities know they need to appear to be cooperating with Ed, but also believe the truth is irrelevant. It's not possible for them to be transparent about what they have been doing.

Before seeing this film I was familiar with Arlo Guthrie's heart-wrenching protest against what happened in Chile in a song titled Victor Jara which appeared on his Amigo album. (1976) Victor Jara Martinez was a teacher, poet, singer-songwriter and leftist political activist in Chile up until the coup that overthrew President Allende in September 1973. His protest songs were about peace and social justice, but his death at the hands of the U.S. sponsored Pinochet government was quite contrary to peaceful.

The song is essentially the story of Jara's life, from peasant to singer-songwriter who "fought for the people of Chile with his songs and his guitar." Each verse ends with "His hands were gentle, his hands were strong."

After several verses describing his support for working people and campaigning for Allende, there's a transition to a scene that is central in the film Missing, inside the stadium.

When Pinochet seized Chile they arrested Victor then –
They caged him in the stadium with 5000 frightened men

Costa-Gavras' treatment of the stadium is almost as if this structure were a character in the story. Early on we're in a car moving past it, and again we get a closer glimpse. Further into the story Ed is interviewing one of Beth and Charles' friends who had been arrested and taken to the stadium. Finally Ed and Beth obtain permission to go into the stadium to see if Charles is there. Ed comes face-to-face with the magnitude of the horror.

Amigo is one of my favorite albums by Arlo, so I don't even have to look up these lyrics.

The broke the bones in both his hand, beat him on the head, 
They tore him with electric wires and then they shot him dead.
His hands were gentle his hands were strong.

I share all this as setup for the story of Beth and Ed looking for Charles.

Charles Horman (John Shea)

Charles and Beth were dreamers of sorts, like many of us when we were young idealists in the 60s and early 70s. They were looking for a better world. Charles was writing for a controversial newspaper. addressing issues.

After the military overthrow and martial law there was an intense fear instilled in the city along with curfews, shootings in the streets and thousands being arrested.

Charles was away from the capitol in another part of the countryside, Viña del Mar, where he encounters U.S. operatives staying at the same place he is. Seeing that he's an American they are very open with him about what they're doing, which is helping overthrow Allende in order to install a pro-U.S. government. Charlie asks too many questions and takes too many notes, and the end result is his later disappearance. He was another man who knew too much.

Beth and Ed, seeking truth.

His father flies to Santiago as soon as he learns his son is missing. He's a conservative Christian Scientist, and up till this moment never thought much of what his liberal son and daughter-in-law were doing.

This is what makes it such a great film. Beth and Ed have a somewhat adversarial relationship at the beginning, but as the story unfolds Ed keeps running into U.S. Embassy b.s., he begins to have a change of heart. By the end of the film there's a mutual respect between Beth and her father-in-law as they learn what Beth suspected all along. Charlie was eliminated. He'd heard and seen too much.

It's heartbreaking, but an essential and important film revealing the manner in which our government views other nations, not as autonomous states but as pawns to be manipulated for our own ends.

In Seymour Hersh's incisive account of the Kissinger years, The Price of Power, we see the ugly side of the Nixon-Kissinger reign. Hersh spends more than forty pages debunking the Kissinger claim that what the CIA did in Chile was a U.S. victory.

Sadly, our heavy-handed involvement in Chile wasn't the first time our government assisted in the overthrow of a democratically elected president. (See my blog post Propaganda Revisited.)

As Ed experiences first-hand the atrocities taking place and the lies coming out of the mouths of our U.S. spokespersons, the real picture begins to come into focus. His determination becomes an Ariadne's thread that leads him out of the bureaucratic labyrinth.

In the end Ed respects Beth's courage, and Beth respects Ed's boldness, and active love for his son.

The film is based on a true story about one of many ugly chapters that have occurred during our lifetimes if you're a Boomer or beyond. After the generals seized Chile in 1973 the Constitution was suspended and dissidents kidnapped, tortured and killed. There were no free elections until 1990.

Kissinger's two volume memoir paints a picture of himself as a heroic figure. His fingerprints were all over this chapter from Chile's marred history.

An illuminating moment comes when Ed confronts the U.S. ambassador after learning what has really happened.

U.S. Ambassador: We're not involved, Mr Horman. Our position has been completely neutral.
Ed Horman: That is a bald face lie, sir. How can you say a thing like that when you have army colonels, you have naval engineers, they're all over Viña Del Mar!
U.S. Ambassador: Please sit down. Look, it's very obvious you're harbouring some misconception regarding our role here.
Ed Horman: What is your role here? Besides inducing a regime that murders thousands of human beings?
U.S. Ambassador: Let's level with each other, sir. If you hadn't been personally involved in this unfortunate incident, you'd be sitting at home complacent and more or less oblivious to all of this. This mission is pledged to protect American interests, our interests.
Ed Horman: Well, they're not mine.
U.S. Ambassador: There are over three thousand US firms doing business down here. And those are American interests. In other words, your interests. I am concerned with the preservation of a way of life.
Capt. Ray Tower, USN: And a damned good one.
Ed Horman: [Staring out the window] Maybe that's why there's nobody out there.
U.S. Ambassador: You can't have it both ways.

So, what is the correct response when one begins to see the light? Kissinger won. And our moral leadership of the free world took another hit.

The Beatles' White Album Goes On Tour

The White Album is back. This Fall there's a road tour slated as a tribute to one of the classic albums of all time. (My unabashed opinion.) The band is comprised of Todd Rundgren ("Hello, It's Me"), Micky Dolenz ("Hey, hey we're the Monkees"), Christopher Cross ("Sailing"), Jason Scheff and Joey Molland (Badfinger guitarist). 

The album, which came out in 1968, is being honored in this 51st anniversary year.  The tour will kick off in Atlantic City at the Golden Nugget on September 21, with shows as far West as Akron, Ohio, though most along the Eastern Seaboard up through New England.

When I see the name Christopher Cross I can't help but think of the expression Criss Cross which is at the center of Hitchcock's intense 1951 thriller Strangers On A Train. (If you don't know this film I strongly encourage that you it.) The real Christopher Cross exploded on the scene in 1980 with a debut album that garnered five Grammy Awards.

As for the White Album... if one were to ask which Beatles album you have played the most over the years, in my case it would be The White Album. Of course when I was growing up it was the album sleeve that was white. The photo here on this page is a white vinyl of the White Album, being played at my daughter's house in Iowa. A treat.

Tommy Lee Jones makes a great reference to the White Album in the film Men In Black. And I have given it a shout out in my recent blog post Beatles Discography: What Are Your Favorite Beatles Albums?

TRIVIA: Micky Dolenz tried out for the role of "The Fonz" in the 1974-1984 television show Happy Days.

Related Links
If interested in more info such tour dates etc., here are the details at Stereogum.
 And if you're a White Album fan, you may enjoy this diversion from 2013: Why Was the White Album White?
Peter Tork's Passing Brings Back Memories

* * * *

Last night's Downtown Duluth Art Walk was rewarding, and I will try to share some of what we saw here. Today is the Park Point Art Fait, and the weather's perfecto.

Till next. Enjoy your weekend.