"Don't they ever migrate?"

So I wake up early, head over to imdb.com and find out that Suzanne Pleshette has died. She played Annie Hayworth, the raven-haired school teacher in Alfred Hitchcock's THE BIRDS.

This got me thinking about the film. Well I can't sleep, so I might as well write something constructive at 6 AM!

It's a very odd role. When she's first introduced, you think she's just another character, and although she's not in the film that much, she's quite important to the structure of the film, and the whole way the film balances out as it progresses.

It is at her character's house that the film really gets going when - in a very scary scene of unease - there's an ominous thud at Annie Hayworth's door. What can it be? Well, it's a dead bird that struck the door full-on. It must have lost its way ... dive-bombing suicide birds, or omen of impending doom?

Pleshette's character, connected to Rod Taylor's character, Mitch Brenner - she used to go out with Mitch in the movie - but now we presume, through Hitchcock's clever use of picking exactly the right actress, delicately framing Pleshette and Hedren in the same frame, at opposing sides; that Annie Hayworth is the complete opposite of Tippi Hedren's character, Melanie Daniels. Or is she?

She's also a lesbian.

Now when you're a kid, even then, you know that Pleshette's character is "different". She dresses in dark clothes, has a husky voice, offers immediately for Hedren's character to share a room, and generally acts like a lesbian. Oh, and she smokes like a man. This is the sixties, after all. Not content with just THE BIRDS in the film, Hitchcock has fun with the complexities of his characters.

THE BIRDS works on many levels. Visually, it's a tour-de-force of survival horror. Thematically, it's as rich in psychological dilemmas as Hitchcock's VERTIGO. But in THE BIRDS, Hitchcock uses the film to build impending apocalyptical doom through fearsome character interaction and development.

THE BIRDS aren't on-screen that much, and the film becomes more effective because of it. The frantic reactions of characters in the film, their cursory glances at one another; sometimes frantic during the attacks, other times predatory against other characters through their own feelings against one other. THE BIRDS pits a lot of self-involved characters against a mass onslaught of far lesser creatures of limited intelligence. Yet THE BIRDS win.

Pleshette's character in THE BIRDS can be seen as the original harbinger of the birds themselves, before Hedren becomes the "focus" of the ferocious bird attacks. Notice, if you will that most of the attacks come in the film, directly in scenes involving Pleshetter's character, Annie Hayworth: the scene at her house - the bird hits the door. The scene at the party she attends - the birds attack. The scene at the school - the birds attack.

It's not until the Hayworth character is killed - off-screen, only to be discovered in a disturbing sequence where we "see" and discover the body for ourselves, as the camera moves forward from the characters' point-of-view - that any sense of hope, much like her character harboured for feelings of Mitch, and for the future in general - are lost, and all hope for survival in Bodega Bay is gone.

The film becomes a metaphor for the characters in the film. Most people don't migrate. They don't move on. They never change. The birds may come, but they'll pass, surely? With Mitch Brenner and family, with Annie Hayworth, they are stuck with their lives in Bodega Bay. But when THE BIRDS do come, they're here to stay.

"Don't they ever migrate?"