Study Questions: Week Three

Double Trouble: Bad Mommies and Really Bad Birds

Films: Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963).

Both Psycho and The Birds exemplify the recurrance of certain images and themes in Hitchcock's work: i.e.the destructive influences of mothers on their sons, attaching sinister qualities to familiar and harmless objects (here birds), and the dangers of sexual desire.

Psycho: Mother's Not Herself Today.

1. What is the significance of the long tracking shot which opens the film? How does it transform the viewer into a voyeur?

2. How does Marion Crane's (Janet Leigh) encounter with the braggart Cassidy (Frank Albertson) in her boss's office make her decide to steal the money and flee?

3. How could Marion's desire to escape her dreary surroundings be regarded as the prime cause of her death? What does it suggest about the consequences of rejecting conventional (and moral) behavior?

4. What is the significance of the policeman in the reflecting sun glasses? Why does he seem so sinister? Is he a projection of Marion's guilt?

5. List three good reasons why YOU would never have stopped at the Bates Motel.

6. How is the decor of the motel office associated with the action of the film and with Marion's name?

7. Tony Perkins, who would forever be Norman Bates after this film, had previously been cast as a rather naive and sensitive young man. How did casting him against type add to the character of Norman?

8. What was the dramatic effect of having the film's star murdered only a third of the way through the film?

9. In what ways does Norman's mother resemble Sebastian's mother in Strangers on a Train (both physically and psychologically)?

10. In what ways does the film reflect the popularity of Freud's theories in the 1950s? Is the psychiatrist's explanation of Norman's behavior to be taken seriously or ironically? How does the final images of Norman in a straitjacket and Marion's car emerging from the swamp suggest the mystery has not been solved?

The Birds: It All Began with Lovebirds.

1. In the opening sequence, Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), enters a pet store to pick up a bird for her aunt. Consider the way she is dressed, her motive for getting the bird, and her behavior with Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor). What sort of a person should we assume her to be?

2. Why does Melanie buy the lovebirds for Mitch's sister? Why does she go to such trouble to deliver them?

3. Once again a Hitchcock film begins with the protagonist leaving the city for a piece of the American heartland. Mitch refers to San Francisco, where he practices law, as "an anthill." Does Hitchcock encourage the audience to accept the familiar American cultural myth about the moral superiority of small-town America, or is he attempting to undercut that myth?

4. What do the expressions on the faces of the denizens of Bodega Bay (the store owner for instance) and the erroneous information they distribute say about the good, simple people of rural America?

5. Would you try to cross Bodega bay in a small motor boat while wearing a full-length mink coat and high heels? What is the significance of this image (if any)?

6. How do women treat each other in this film? Think of the meeting of Annie Hayward (Suzanne Pleshette) and Melanie, of Melanie and Lydia Brenner (Jessica Tandy).

7. Melanie arrives and tells a string of lies to various people. What do you make of her behavior? How is it tied to the theme of the film?

8. What do the mother's of Mitch and Melanie have in common (her mother we know only from what Melanie tells Annie)? In what sense might Annie be seen as a better mother than either of them?

9. How does Hitchcock build suspense with his gradual introduction of the birds? 10. Why does the film twice show the birds attacking school children? How do the attacks enhance the mood of horror?

11. What is the significance of the scene in the resaturant/bar? What is the importance of the advice of the amateur ornithologist and the drunk quoting the biblical prophet Ezekiel? How correct are they?

12. How are the two plots (Melanie's practical joke and the arrival of the birds) connected thematically? Do the birds symbolize the significance of the human actions in the film?

13. What do you make of the final sequence? Will Mitch and his women escape the birds? What do the visual images suggest?