Introduction

One of the lessons my students have taught me over the course of many Hitchcock seminars is that The Birds (1961) can be a difficult film to interpret. There are several reasons for this opinion, of course, some focused on the surrealistic atmosphere Hitchcock achieves in the film, others concentrated on the way the narrative casually brings the quotidian world into contact with the fantastic. Naturally, my students recognize these issues and regularly bring them forward for discussion, but this is rarely their main concern. Indeed, their principal complaint regarding The Birds is that the film fails to conclude with the traditional offer of a unifying resolution.

This argument is not easily refuted, for there is no disputing that the film concludes on a bleak note, just as there is no disputing that the nature of the narrative's problematic all but guarantees no easy escape from the birds – figuratively, of course, and perhaps in a more literal sense as well. But then, Hitchcock's tendency was often to leave his viewers suspended between apprehension and frustration, at times preferring uneasiness to contentment as a concluding sentiment. The Birds follows this pattern closely, leaving its audience suspended over an abyss of terrifying uncertainty, with Hitchcock refusing the call for the satisfaction of release. Owing to the discomfort produced by being held in a state of suspension, it is hardly surprising that this feeling of deferment is experienced by many as a disappointment.

My students’ protest rarely includes displeasure that the film closes unhappily because the expected romantic liaison has potentially been frustrated, or because a beloved character has been sacrificed to the mayhem. Instead, they object to the fact that The Birds doesn't actually end – at least not in the conventional sense. And it is on this point that they frequently raise an interesting argument that focuses not on the conventions of the Hollywood film, but on the empirical problem of causation.