As Hitchcock’s “The Birds” celebrates its 60th anniversary this month, actress Veronica Cartwright reveals an astonishing secret about one of the film’s most famous scenes.
60 years ago, Alfred Hitchcock terrorized the entire world with feathers, beaks and claws by unleashing his terrifying Birds on Hollywood. Inspired by a short story by Daphné du Maurier, but also by a surprising news item that occurred in real life, this legendary horror film recounted the violent and mysterious attacks of birds on the inhabitants of San Francisco.
For the anniversary of this essential film, the actress Veronica Cartwright who played Cathy, Tippi Hedren’s little sister, spoke of her memories of filming in a book by Patrick Loubatière, dedicated to the 110 actresses who counted in Hitchcock’s career.
In the preface to the book that she herself signed, Cartwright confides in her meeting with the master of suspense and her discussions with the latter, particularly concerning the tricks used on the set to give the famous birds this impression of mass and threat.
The famous actress, now aged 74 (and who we could also see in Alien or L’Etoffe des Héros subsequently), thus returned to one of the most emblematic sequences of the film: that in which we can see Tippi Hedren sitting on a public bench, behind a children’s climbing frame, in a schoolyard.
While the voices of schoolchildren echo in the distance and the young woman smokes a cigarette, a first crow comes nonchalantly to land on the metal structure, soon joined by a second, then a third bird. When Melanie turns around, a few seconds later, the construction is entirely covered with birds, which provokes a real feeling of surprise and anxiety in the protagonist and in the viewer.
Universal Pictures
However, as Veronica Cartwright reveals in the preface to the work signed by Patrick Loubatière, Hitchcock used a very simple trick to develop this plan, trusting in the magic of cinema to lure his audience:
“(…) The birds in the school chicken coop weren’t all real.”remembers the actress.
“A number of them were cardboard cutouts. So I asked [à Hitchcock] : ‘But won’t people notice?’ He replied: ‘When the eyes follow movement, they imagine that everything is alive.’ Well, to this day, when I look at this scene and think I’ve spotted a fake bird, it suddenly starts moving.”
When you see the famous scene again, know that several fake birds are hiding among the real crows. Discover Patrick Loubatière’s work in full to learn more about Hitchcock’s career and his actresses.
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