1. One interpretation of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds hold that the film is really two movies, one the love story between Mitch and Melanie, the other the bird attacks. The two stories are combined in various ways to comment on the relationship between Mitch and Melanie and on the relationship between Mitch and his mother. In the beginning, Mitch and Melanie meet at the pet shop when a bird escapes from its cage, and they chase it down, capture it, and return it to its cage. At the end of the film, the situation is reversed as the human beings are trapped in the house, which serves a their cage, and the birds let them leave. The attacks to that time have tested the resolve of the humans and raised questions about the possessiveness of the mother in this family.
Mitch and his mother act as a couple throughout the film, while Mitch and Melanie constitute another couple in a sort of triangle. Melanie is an intrusion into the world of other and son, a welcome intrusion for the son, a threat to the mother. In the cosmic scheme of things, this is also an intrusion that has to be punished. The three-way relationship is presented as Freudian in nature, and there is ample evidence that this interpretation does explain much about the relationships in the film.
The triangle represented by mother-son-and blonde is a replacement for the previous triangle of mother-son-and schoolteacher, and the schoolteacher, Lydia, shows her jealousy from the beginning, as does the mother. The mother looks askance at this blonde from the city, and Melanie knows it. Her conversation with the schoolteacher shows that the teacher also knows it and that she as well has been aware of the degree to which Mitch is tied to his mother's apron strings. It is not until after the bird attack in the house, when Mitch's mother is attacked and Melanie takes control by chasing off the birds and saving the mother, that Melanie displaces the mother in the family s...