The exact moment Alfred Hitchcock became a monster: “Brutal and ugly and relentless”
At this point, not many people are surprised when they hear that one of their favourite directors has behaved in a more-than-questionable way on set. The abuse of power within Hollywood is a tale as old as time, with high-up people within the industry exploiting their fame to humiliate and hurt others with less power.
We’ve seen it time and time again, with the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, William Friedkin and Roman Polanski becoming corrupted by their colossal egos and thinking of themselves as invincible and unstoppable forces. However, there is one director who was initially seen as being different to the others or exempt from this kind of behaviour but has proven that he is just the same as everyone else after openly discussing his disrespect towards women and being called out by former female colleagues who have spoken up about the abuse they were subjected to while working with him.
While Alfred Hitchcock is seen as the master of suspense and the darling of British cinema, the director is far from perfect. Despite making countless classic films and redefining Hollywood as we know it through anxiety-inducing films such as Rear Window, Psycho and Vertigo, Hitchcock has not nearly been criticised enough for his questionable on-set practices and gross misconduct towards his female actors.
The director had no shame in sharing his degrading thoughts on women in general, making large sweeping statements about how female actors were less talented than men and their only worth came from their appearance and sex appeal. If this wasn’t a big enough red flag, then the director was also criticised by former colleagues for his treatment of women on set, with Tippi Hedren detailing her insidious experiences while filming The Birds.
The Birds, directed in 1963, follows a woman called Melanie Daniels during her visit to a seaside town, only to find that the birds are terrorising the local residents. It is a peculiar film within Hitchcock’s filmography, given that the primary threat does not come from a person, but the director makes up for the lack of human terror through his treatment of Hedren on set.
Hedren described the brutal production of the film and five particular days in which handlers hurled a variety of real-life birds at her, saying, “It was brutal and ugly and relentless. I was too focused on my own survival to notice, but I was told later that it was even more horrifying and heartbreaking for the crew to watch than the previous four days had been. And there wasn’t a thing anyone but Hitchcock could do to put a stop to it.”
Hedren was completely exhausted by the experience, only experience one moment of relief when a bird pecked alarmingly close to her eye and she finally snapped, telling Hitchcock, “I’m done”, breaking down into tears from the exhaustion. “Minutes passed before I looked up to discover that everyone had just left me there in the middle of that vast, silent soundstage, completely spent, empty and alone”.
There was no care or safeguarding for Hedren during the production of The Birds, with the actor being subjected to brutal and relentless working conditions without any thought to her wellbeing or safety. Apparently, Cary Grant happened to visit the set during this time and told Hedren that she was ‘the bravest woman he knew’, witnessing the awful conditions that she was subjected to. While Hitchcock certainly got the film made, at what cost?
