Wednesday 9 July 2014

Hitchcock's The Birds: The Montage Aesthetic Influences with focus on Russian Constructivists


"In his open schoolhouse sequence, Hitchcock pays homage to Battleship Potemkin by transforming the shattered lens of the woman's fallen pince-nez on the steps, a famous image, into the shattered, fallen glasses of a besieged girl as she runs into town" (Orr, 22).

"This painted image[Laughing jester in Blackmail(1929)]has been variously interpreted usefully as Hitchcock's purest exercise in the " Kuleshov effect", whereby a single image may take on different meanings according to the context in which it is seen" (Sterritt, 13)



Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) is perhaps one of his most complicated artistic works in which his montage theoretical approaches can be established and emerged as his hallmarks of his style of editing and interest to create and compose the formal cinematic image. As so frequently occurred with Hitchcock, he seeks to go beyond the conventional rules which are dictated by studio system. A part of his editing process is incredibly a kind of refusal to the bound of rationality and normality which is practiced by means of standard relative resolutions. His formalistic fidelity to the different school of montage such as French Impressionists, German Expressionists and Russian constructivists immediately prefigures and foreshadows his demonstrative moments of physical and emotional chaos that determine Hitchcockian's importance to voyeuristic look and its object of desire. From the beginning of the film, it seems that Hitchcock assures the spectator of the continuity editing style that dominates Hollywood classic narrative, but, by the first bird's attack on Melanie (Tippi Hedren) in her boat (25:26), he breaks down the continuous reality of the scene by establishing a kind of attraction montage (Eisensteinian one?) which is supposed to shock the spectator's visual expectations. The narrative sections of the film is chronologically constructed on the spatial and temporal continuity which can be referred to Pudovkin's simultaneous relationship between compositions especially when we realize that Hitchcock had read Pudovkin's book, Film Technique and Film Acting. But the expectation of what comes next is disturbed with respect to Eisenstein's strategy of editing: "The use of quick Fire montage in attack sequences recalls Eisenstein's editing in his silent classic, Battleship Potemkin (1925).In the schoolhouse attack we could say that Hitchcock restages and transforms the Odessa Steps Massacre into a mass attack" (Orr, 22).

Of course, the switch back and forth between the objective and the subjective point of view shots which is not Eisensteinian exactly defines Hitchcock's method of filming in his style. Nevertheless, this leads onto a final point. Hitchcock's formalistic desire to edit the shots in the climactic moments transforms the temporal and the spatial continuity to the analytical objectivity of the constructivist's aesthetic such as the ones of Eisenstien, Kuleshov and Pudovkin. In 1920, Eisenstein's dialectical montage and his innovative achievements of silent film drew Hitchcock's attention to the forms of montage, ellipsis and crosscutting which have associations with Russian theories of montage.  Hitchcock's awareness of German Expressionists' experiences in moving camera and their perspective art designing in creating the artificial set becomes key argument in post-war period critical writings. But his inclination to combine the outcomes of Russian and German film school's theoretical approaches with the classical continuity system in the framework dominated by studio production rules ignites his creative fuel to propel a style which illuminates his precious understanding of his contemporary artistic movements.

Hitchcock's The Birds is an achievement of his skill to induce the spectator to pay attention to montage that characterizes the visual connection between the characters and their own surrounded spaces. Eisenstein's metric and rhythmic categories are often motivated and signified by the events that happen during the film and help to highlight the suspenseful moments of the narrative. For example the most of the scenes in which Melanie are attacked by the birds contain numerous metric and rhythmic montages that embody the expression of the theme and the focus on the formal and the stylistic Hitchcockian dimensions. Not only are the point of view shots of the characters associated to the suspended and the irrational theme of the scenes, but the characteristic constructivist's montage is consistently repeated and implied through the juxtaposition of the images. For example, when Melanie is looking through the window at the climactic moment(explosion scenes) in the gas station, there are a lot of her point of view shots which juxtaposed graphically and rhythmically with the close ups of her face. Also, the axial editing in the scene in which the corpse of the famer is discovered by Lydia (Jessica Tandy) represents the montage aesthetic of the shots manifested by Russian montage theoreticians.

Hitchcock's interest to practice the constructivists' axioms on montage in The Birds indicates his struggle to protect his theory of suspense which is obviously represented in the scene in which the people included Melanie in restaurant try to stop the man close to the gas station of lighting his matches(1:25:23).The intuitive understanding of the suspense in that scene assigns the montage accordance with constructivists' simultaneity (Pudovkin?) relationship between the shots. Although constructivists' montage dominates the entire suspenseful dramatic situation of the scene, Eisenstein's affects at the deeper level of formalistic logic can be explored because of graphic montage which can be followed in the relationship between the shots.

While it is hard to be certain how editorial such formalistic surmises are for thinking about Hitchcock's influence of Russian constructivists, it might be ventured in this vein that the inventing of an ideal editing strategy illuminates his relation to continuity editing and its restrictions and constraints which are imposed by the studio system. According to historical documents, Hitchcock thus tried to gain control over the studio's rules by eliminating editorial choice throughout filmmaking. He could shoot it once because the strategy of editing had been envisioned in the storyboard. For example, the scene in which Melanie is waiting outside schoolhouse and smoking a cigarette (1:09:57) was meticulously drawn on the storyboard. Hitchcock's method of editing which is precisely calculated by his method of control is based on the playing with the audience expectation and Melanie's point of view shots. One recalls in this regard Hitchcock's aesthetic and directorial style which are both as the evident onscreen and as the spectator understands it to be off screen. The birds gathering which is being grouped off screen creates a sense of terror for spectator's suspenseful anxiety and Melanie's moment of understanding. The category of editing in this scene can be still compared with Pudovkin's simultaneous relationship between the shots. The presence of Eisensteinian rhythmic and graphic in the scene suggests that Hitchcock tried to choose the most important shots to be edited together in the final cut.

Hitchcock's profound intellectual involvement with the post-revolution soviet constructivist montage theories is one of the most challenging aspects of his work in making The Birds. as his calculated cuts illustrate, the cultivated and the marginality of his characters in the film help the spectator to feel the supressed impulses in the "look" that transfers between the subjective shots while it seems that the characters are looking at the objects or each other. His entire oeuvre is an effort to explore the possibilities of combination between Russian montage aesthetic and the stereotypical continuity editing which is practiced in mainstream American cinema. There is no filmmaker more willing to make cinematic time and space in such a way that the use of a visual metaphor becomes the crucial element in choosing the right shot to be juxtaposed to another one.

In other words, if The Birds stands out as the astonishing uses of montage of attraction, it is also significant for its experimentation with simultaneity and continuity editing in which the opposite kind of technique and editing revolve the suspense through a truly brilliant piece of mise-en scene. In that kind of editing, the obvious contrast of the graphic relationship between the shots and the off-screen occurrences provide the required artificiality of the entire fictional environment, and Hitchcock' use of constructivist's montage elaborates his strikingly obvious desire to play with the spectator's expectation and understanding of time reference in the climactic and the dramatic moments of the plot and the narrative. For example, when Melanie goes upstairs to the attic to search for the source of the noise (1:46:35) and the bird's attack takes place (1:47:42), Hitchcock expands temporality of the event by the technique of montage because his rigorously rapid graphic constructed editing creates the perplexity and the confusion for the spectator (and perhaps Melanie too) to realize how the real time has been passed.

The combination of point of view shots and the camera movements sometimes in Hitchcock's films create labyrinthine passages to reflect his avant-garde tendency to represent the alteration between German expressionist and Russian constructivist aesthetics. For example, in The Birds in the scene in which Melanie delivers the love birds to Mitch's (Rod Taylor) place (21:56) the combination of point of view shot and the camera movement not only intensify the suspenseful experience of the scene but also it emphasizes on the rhythmic montage which is categorized by Eisenstein in his essays on editing. On the other hand, Hitchcock's emphasis to draw the spectator's attention from trivial to important shots can be reminiscent of Eisenstein's theoretical writings in his book, Film Form, about the analytical editing which was practiced by D. W. Griffith in his films in the beginning of the silent era. According to Eisenstein, the director such as Griffith can direct the viewer's visual experience from the long shots of the objects, the landscapes and the human bodies to the closer shots such as medium shot and close up of the same ones in the establishment shots and sequences. It seems that Hitchcock who was perhaps familiar with Eisenstein's theoretical writings attempts to practice the technique in most of his films such as the beginning of Psycho (1960) and Shadows of a Doubt (1943). From the beginning of The Birds. Hitchcock's analytical editing to get closer to the subject can be detected through microscopic sensitivity of his camera to discover and explore profoundly the elaborated and the enriched visual narrative. By Melanie's approaching to Mitch's town and family, it seems that Hitchcock's camera style of editing getting closer and closer to the important tones, scenes and expressions. His closer shots make the spectator aware of the important visual cues, and his desire to stage the scenes by using the analytical editing punctuates the flow of visual expression and a specific affinity with the montage which is considered as the part of Hitchcock's style to narrate the story.

It is impossible to tell exactly in this essay how Hitchcock's style has been changed through the period of his filmmaking in terms of his ongoing unpredictable manner to respond to the demand of the film industry and the expectations of the spectators. As we watch The Birds, what are suggested are the theorization and the analysis of his formalistic and modernist approach to create an artificial architecture of mechanism of "look". No wonder it is so difficult to define the nature and the direction of the montage in Hitchcock's films. Of course, it will be easy to assume that he was influenced by his contemporary European and American styles of filmmaking, but Hitchcock's style, the montage zenith, is often marked by his desire to disturb the spectator's expectations rather than offering  a bunch of lectures in film arts in his films. For him, more than anything else, the intellectual and the emotional intensity of the moments determine the logic behind any cut, camera movement and long take. Dark Romanticism, surrealism and the artistic and technical achievements of German and Russian schools of cinema can be all traced and detected through the reviewing of his films, but it is important to remember that Hitchcock never considered himself as an artist who is creating subconsciously. Hitchcock, as one of the greatest inventors of form in the history of cinema, believed that cinema had the affinities with the visual arts, and he taught the young apprentices such as Truffaut and Godard how to plan a film shot by shot with respect to the editorial and formalistic approaches.

"Do you think of yourself as an artist?"

"No, Not particularly" (Bogdanovich, 554).





Bogdanovich, Peter. Who the Devil Made it:Conversations with legendary Film Directors New York: Ballantine Books, 1998.

Orr, John. Hitchcock and 20th Century Cinema London:Wallflower Press, 2005.

Sterritt David. The Films of Alfred Hitchcock New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.









By: Morad Sadeghi

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