This had been the case with Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) based on du Maurier’s bestselling novel published in 1938.īut it had been David O. Selznick, Rebecca‘s producer, who had insisted the film remain as close to its literary source as possible. When author du Maurier heard that Alfred Hitchcock wanted to adapt her short story, she had every reason to be both pleased and confident that the result would reflect the themes of her original. He throws his final cigarette package - the last trapping of luxury and civilization - on the fire.ĭaphne du Maurier around the time of Rebecca’s publication, (1938) Nat moves the dial on the radio and finds no stations are broadcasting. The final scenes, with Nat’s family holed in in their farmhouse, have an apocalyptic flavour: Nat listened to the tearing sound of splintering wood and wondered how many million years of memory were stored in those little brains, behind the stabbing beaks, the piercing eyes, now giving them this instinct to destroy mankind with all the deft precision of machines. It’s as though the war never really ended and the siege of the blitz is everywhere. Nat directly compares the blind savagery of the birds’ attacks to the air raids he experienced over Plymouth. Read books and the like.ĭu Maurier’s short story is set in one of the gloomiest periods of British history, during the post-war years when the trauma of conflict was still present and the sense of deprivation was yet to lift. Nat, we are told, is held in some suspicion by the rural community. The Birds is at least partly social satire.
When at last they do believe there is a genuine problem, their response is to go out with guns and try to shoot the birds. The rural people around Nat seem insular and small-minded. “ Foreign birds maybe,” someone tells him. This is quite unlike anything he has heard of or experienced.Īt first he can’t get the farming community to take it seriously. The birds invade Nat’s home, terrifying his children, going for his young son’s eyes.
As a war veteran this is something he understands: Apprehensive before their time drive themselves to work or folly, the birds do likewise.īut a night of horror is about to follow. They are suddenly aware of their own mortality. The birds, he decides, are in a panic because of a cold snap that seems to herald the coming of winter. Today he watches as an odd assortment of birds - gulls, finches, songbirds - wheel and dive around the furrows. Injured in the war Nat sustains his family by doing odd jobs about a farm, mending fences and digging ditches. So thinks protagonist Nat as he enjoys his solitude on his lunch break. Virago short story collection featuring The Birds
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