Hitchcock Woman the Ninth: Tippi Hedren as Melanie Daniels in The Birds
Looking at the final definitive Hitchock woman from Hitchcock’s career, it’s interesting how non-typical Tippi Hedren among the director’s many female leads. Though she appears in 90% of the film and is definitely the lead character, she does not have the character arc one would expect from a heroine. Here, unlike so many of Hitchcock’s other women (such as the previously discussed Joan Fontaine in Rebecca), Melanie Daniels starts extremely strong. She knows exactly what she wants: the hunky Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), who she meets cute in a bird shop in San Francisco. Though, from the first scene, she reveals herself to be something of a liar and trickster, willing to bend the truth if it helps her get what she wants. And when she tracks Mitch down to the tiny seaside town of Bodega Bay, she meets Mitch’s ex, Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleschette), who tells her about Mitch’s protective mother (Jessica Tandy). But none of this will stop Melanie from going after what she wants. She is strong and willful, but also cold and distant, and is probably the least likable of any of the Hitchcock women. In the early film, one wonders if she’s really capable of having a loving relationship.
But then there’s those vicious bird attacks. In addition to the sheer terror of them, they are also particularly hard on Melanie, targeting her specifically in locations from a boat, to a phone booth, to finally most famously a bloody assault in a tight attic room. Each time, Melanie’s personal armor drops, losing bit by bit her cold confidence, until she ends the film the weakest person left standing. But it’s when she becomes weak that she becomes more human, and that Mitch’s mother finally drops her own defenses, letting her in a bit. By the end, she’s fully joined the family who makes their desperate escape - and she was only allowed to do that once all her defenses are stripped away from her. Very much the opposite of the trajectory of all the other Hitchcock women, who (with a few notable exceptions) almost always end up on top.
Hedren’s performance itself is also unique among the Hitchcock women - famously, this was her first dramatic acting professional performance, since she was plucked out of obscurity in soap commercials. She certainly does not rate among the stronger of the actors Hitchcock used: her emotional range is limited to aloof/flirtatious, terrified, and finally hollow, with jarring transitions between those states. Yet Hitchcock here was at the height of his montage powers, using her body almost as a prop to get exactly the compositions he wanted. It doesn’t help that Rod Taylor seems to have stepped in from a different movie and decade entirely, or that Hedren is acted off the screen by both Suzanne Pleschette and Jessica Tandy. I cannot help but wonder what the movie would have been like if the sultry and full-of-life Pleschette could have starred instead of the significantly more distant and emotionally limited Hedren. Pleschette was not the blonde bombshell Hitchcock was after, but her performance had all the human warmth than Melanie lacks.
But of course the film works and is a masterpiece - with Tippi’s performance exactly like it is. It’s one of the more deliberately “arty” of Hitchcock’s works, with its beautiful compositions, total lack of music, and non-ending. And Hedren’s odd, carefully-managed performance is part of that. Though working with a neophyte actress was hard for all involved (her troubles with the director are well documented elsewhere), in the end Hitchcock created exactly the female protagonist he wanted for his arresting, utterly unique film.
