Hitchcock and the eggheads
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Ethel Griffies in The Birds (1963) and Simon Oakland in Psycho (1960)
Speaking of experts, last week, during our Independence Day trip to the beach with my in-laws, I rewatched The Birds for the first time in several years. What most struck me the last time I watched it—how long it takes to get to the bird attacks—seemed less remarkable to me this time. Hitchcock, master craftsman, spends the first half of the film both lulling the audience and foreshadowing the terror to come, all through the whimsical romance he creates in a realistic-feeling world.
No, what struck me this time was Mrs Bundy (Ethel Griffies), the elderly ornithologist who strides into the film just before the first major attack looking for cigarettes. She knows her birds. She’s observed them for decades and knows what they do and do not do. She has facts and figures, including a strangely precise calculation of the number of birds currently living in North America. Presented with Melanie’s stories of bird attacks, Mrs Bundy pooh-poohs them. Confidently, firmly.
She reminded me of a character who appears at the end of Psycho, the film Hitchcock made immediately before The Birds. Following that film’s unbearably suspenseful climax and shocking twist, Hitchcock treats the viewer to a good five minutes of Dr Richman (Simon Oakland) talking, and talking, and talking. Dr Richman explains to the other characters—and, by extension, the audience—what they’ve just witnessed and how Norman Bates came to be what he is. He knows his Freudian psychobabble and is strangely precise in his diagnosis of Norman. He’s confident, firm. He also feels like he talks forever, a strange inclusion in what is otherwise a terrifically paced, highly visual film.
I’ve seen a few explanations for Dr Richman’s protracted, stentorian lecture:
It’s intended as a genuine scientific explanation of Norman and the events of the film based on the pop Freudianism of the day
It’s intended as a parody of Freudian psychology and the way it can explain away anything
It’s there for structural purposes, to give the audience a few minutes to come down from the suspense and terror of the climax before wrapping up with the film’s genuinely chilling final moments
It’s some combination of the above
I think #3 is indisputable as a formal consideration, and so incline toward #4. But which of #1 and #2 is it?
The huge amount of time Hitchcock gives to Dr Richman suggests #1. Hitchcock loved his jokes but constructed them economically. Also, screenwriter Joe Stefano has said in interviews that he was heavily committed to Freudian analysis at the time, so his contribution was probably intended sincerely.*
On the other hand, Dr Richman acts like a blowhard and his explanation is too pat, too easy, fitting the mystery of Norman Bates snugly within the die-cut confines of theory. His explanation—and based on a single police station interview!**—is incommensurate with what the audience has seen over the preceding hour and a half. His confidence smacks of cocksureness rather than insight. Tellingly, even after his lecture we are left uneasy by Norman in his final scene, during which we leave the safe confines of law and order and expertise and travel down the hall to Norman’s cell and whatever is contained there. One senses that the cops guarding the door have a clearer grasp on Norman than Dr Richman.
The Birds reinforced my gut feeling that the latter is the better understanding of Psycho. Here, the expert shows up nearer the middle of the film rather than at the end and—most unlike Dr Richman, whose explanation is seemingly allowed to stand—is thoroughly humiliated. We see Mrs Bundy twice: the first time as an imperious expert holding court, the second as a traumatized survivor of the thing she denied was possible minutes before. She can’t even bring herself to look at Melanie and Mitch.
Hitchcock learning lessons between films? Or simply a difference in source material and screenwriter? I don’t know, but I think Mrs Bundy’s role in The Birds is the better of the two, heightening rather than explaining away the film’s central mystery.
* I know a psychiatrist does appear in Robert Bloch’s original novel, but I haven’t read it and can’t comment on how this information is handled there.
** Mark Twain comes to mind: “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
