How Elements of Film Create Suspense in "The Birds"

Watching a Hollywood film is a unique, subjective experience, with potentially every member of the audience perceiving the film and its components in a different way and analyzing the story based on their own experiences. People also watch and enjoy different movies for different reasons: to laugh, to cry, to think, to be scared – or maybe all of that in the same film.

One of the giants in 20th century filmmaking is Alfred Hitchcock, who could weave all those elements – humor, emotion, thoughtfulness, terror – into one superb film. He was certainly a master of suspense, however, and this post will look at the way he creates those feelings of tension and ultimately terror through visual design, cinematography and editing, and sound design in one of his best-known films, The Birds.

Concepts

To begin, a few definitions from Benshoff and Griffin’s book America on Film. Visual design is defined as “the choice of sets, costumes, makeup, lighting, color, and actors’ performances and arrangement before the camera” (p. 4).

Cinematography is “how the camera records the visual elements…things like the choice of framing, lenses, camera angle, camera movement, what is in focus and what is not” (p. 4), while editing “refers to how all the individual shots the camera records are put together in order to create meaning or tell a story” (p.4).

Finally, sound design is fairly self-explanatory. Benshoff and Griffin define it in terms of dialogue and musical soundtracks, but as these clips will show, the absence of those elements can create even more intense emotional reactions from the audience.

Elements of Suspense

In this clip from The Birds, Melanie Daniels, played by Tippi Hedren, is waiting outside the school in the small town of Bodega Bay to pick up a girl, the younger sister of the man she is visiting. For no apparent reason, the birds have recently become aggressive toward people, and a full-scale bird attack seems imminent. Melanie hopes to pick up the young girl and get her out of harm’s way, but as the scene plays out, Hitchcock builds the suspense as if to say there’s no way to avoid the birds.

The Birds Gather

















The scene’s visual design is simple, with Melanie in the foreground and the apparent focus of the scene. She sits on a bench in the bright light of day, not a cloud in the sky, and the audience should be lulled into a sense of calm for the time being. But in a textbook case of irony, the audience sees a few birds beginning to land behind Melanie, while she does not notice. With her perfect hair and stylish outfit, Melanie seems out of place and the birds soon become the dominant characters, black figures perched ominously on the jungle gym as if they’re ready to strike.

The cinematography and editing are also simple and straightforward, which is potentially why the two elements are so effective. The scene begins with Melanie in the foreground, at eye level, and one bird seems to land harmlessly enough on the jungle gym behind her. But in a horror film entitled The Birds, the audience knows this is hardly harmless and the suspense begins. As Melanie smokes to steady her nerves, the camera cuts back to the jungle gym briefly to show a few more birds have landed, and the suspense grows with each feather. This continues for a bit, and then the camera moves to a closer shot of Melanie’s face. She looks worried and keeps checking over her shoulder, waiting for the children to finish what they’re doing inside the school so she can rescue her friend’s sister and return her safely home. Then Melanie’s eye catches a single bird in the sky. The next shot goes to that single bird and the audience sees the scene through Melanie’s eyes, transporting them directly into the film. The camera follows the bird as it descends to its perch on the jungle gym, and the audience is hit with a feeling of dread when the number of birds has suddenly jumped enormously without Melanie – or the audience – knowing. The technique is as simple as letting the audience view the scene through the character’s point of view, but in this case it is devastatingly effective.

The sound design in this scene, and the entire film, for that matter, is ingenious. Hitchcock chose not to use any musical soundtrack at all, but rather to opt for sounds of the birds or silence. This scene features the only music in the film, the off-screen sound of the schoolchildren singing. The song itself is harmless enough, but it somehow lends a melancholy backdrop to the scene. Perhaps it’s because the birds don’t make a sound, which is eerie for such a large number of them, and the audience is startled when so many creatures are then revealed with no warning. Whatever the case, the audience reaction is almost always the same: surprise, dread, and a sneaking suspicion that those birds aren’t just in the scene as set decoration.

And just so you’re not left in suspense, that attack certainly does come.

The Attack


This scene could make another interesting study in relation to these elements of film – the fact that Melanie is claustrophobically trapped in a phone booth during nearly the entire scene is enough to make me squirm, let alone the swarm of birds. Undisputable, however, is how these two clips show Alfred Hitchcock’s masterful use of simple elements of visual design, cinematography and editing, and sound design to create the suspenseful masterpiece that is The Birds.