Director Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, his 1963 adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier short story, is generally acknowledged to be his final masterwork. Tippi Hedren stars in the film as Melanie Daniels, a spoiled newspaper heiress who visits Bodega Bay, a small northern California hamlet in order to play a prank on Mitch, a handsome lawyer (Rod Taylor) she's met in a bird shop.
Melanie's comeuppance begins with an attack on her by a lone seagull as she's motoring across the bay and ends with a room full of winged creatures flying directly at her face that found the nascent actress trapped inside a cage on the set for days until she literally collapsed, an emotional wreck.
Hedren, a stunningly gorgeous blonde, had been a print model when Hitchcock and his wife and closest creative collaborator, Alma, saw her in a television commercial for a diet soft drink and immediately thought of her for the part of Melanie. After a series of meetings and tests, they quietly put her under personal contract and assigned the untrained Hedren the lead in the movie (where she co-starred alongside veterans Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette and Veronica Cartwright).
According to several of his biographers and Hedren herself, Hitchcock then literally took control of the young divorcee's life. Choosing everything from her clothes to the choice of wine she drank at dinner, the autocratic director soon overwhelmed Hedren, who did her best in what must have been an extremely difficult situation. (In a truly bizarre development, Hitchcock had a doll made up to look like her as a birthday gift for Hedren's daughter, Melanie Griffith—and had it delivered in a tiny coffin to the child.)
These behind-the-scenes machinations aren't evident in the film, in which the cool façade of Hedren's Melanie crumbles as the bird attacks increase (and as she becomes more emotionally vulnerable at the same time)—although they're not hard to imagine as having happened concurrently. Both are part of the reason why viewers have had a field day analyzing the movie since its release. One of the most satisfying things about The Birds for true film geeks is not just the layers of subtext waiting to be discovered with repeat viewings (and boy, is the movie loaded with them) but for the way that, as least with Hedren, life truly did seem to imitate art.
For queer audiences the character of Annie, the lonely spinster schoolteacher (played with real finesse by Pleshette) is easily read as a closet lesbian—an identification that was made implicit in the thrillingly, emotionally deft theatrical adaptation that local playwright and Hell in a Handbag artistic director David Cerda (in collaboration with co-author Kelly Anchors and Pauline Pang) has successfully mounted twice. Hedren herself made a guest appearance in the company's last revival of the play in 2007 (along with Cartwright), and her humor and insight about Hitchcock, the film and their subsequent collaboration, Marnie, were delights for the audience.
The actress returns to Chicago Tuesday, March 27, for a screening of The Birds at 7:30 p.m. at the Music Box, 3733 N. Southport Ave., as part of TCM's "Road to Hollywood" tour. Golden Globe winner Hedren will introduce the film, along with TCM movie host Ben Mankiewicz. Tickets are free—on a first-come, first-served basis—and available for download at www.tcm.com/2012/roadtohollywood.
Film notes:
—Cinema Q II, the free, LGBT-themed film series with screenings Wednesdays in March at the Chicago Cultural Center at 6:30pm in the Claudia Cassidy Theater continues March 21 with French Canadian queer auteur Xavier Dolan's 2009 black comedy I Killed My Mother (which I wrote about at length last week) and concludes Wed., March 28, with the 2003 documentary Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin. Rustin, a justly celebrated late African-American civil-rights activist, has been lauded with a series of tributes and commemorations this month (in honor of what would have been his 100th birthday) but as out director Bennett Singer's film reminds us, Rustin began as a true rebel—an unapologetic, openly gay Black teenager in a time when those things were unheard of.
Singer will attend the screening, which The Legacy Project (Rustin will be inducted in October as one of the group's initial honoree's) and Affinity Chicago are co-sponsoring. DVDs of the film will be available for purchase. A dessert reception, provided by Ann Sather, will follow a post-screening discussion with Singer. Windy City Times is one of the series' media sponsors. www.legacyprojectchicago.org
—The late Whitney Houston's biggest movie hit, The Bodyguard—the 1992 romantic thriller in which she co-stars with Kevin Costner (who claimed in his rather self-serving eulogy to her that he was responsible for her casting)—is retuning to movie theaters for one night. In the quasi-musical Houston plays an onscreen variation of herself, a pop superstar named Rachel Marron; Costner plays Frank Farmer, a sullen, former Secret Service agent assigned to protect the diva because she's been receiving death threats. The movie—melodramatic and rather far-fetched—is best enjoyed as a microcosm of early '90s culture, from its fashions to its music.
(The soundtrack, one of the most successful ever, contains Houston's signature song, "I Will Always Love You.") Surprisingly, as the picture progresses, Houston's chip on her shoulder/vulnerable little girl performance and stunning beauty and voice somehow do sorta seem to match up with Costner's terse line readings and barely contained ego. (He was also then at the height of his screen popularity.) The 20th-anniversary screening takes place at various Chicagoland theaters Wed., March 28. www.fathomevents.com/classics/event/thebodyguard.aspx
—Four DVDs of note: Michelle Williams stars as the ethereal Monroe in My Week with Marilyn, based on the memoirs of bisexual English writer Simon Curtis (already out on DVD) while Rooney Mara takes on the role of the tough, bisexual computer hacker in David Fincher's American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (now available). Both ladies were nominated for Oscars but lost to mighty Meryl Streep (whose The The Iron Lady, from lesbian director Phyllida Lloyd, is out April 10). Eating Out: The Final Weekend, the fifth installment in Q. Alan Brocka's guilty-pleasure gay-sex comedy franchise, is out March 27.
Check out my archived reviews at www.windycitymediagroup.com or www.knightatthemovies.com . Readers can leave feedback at the latter website.
