Focalisation in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds

Celestino Deleyto

doi:10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.199411729

Authors

Celestino Deleyto University of Zaragoza

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.199411729

Abstract

This essay is an attempt to clarify several points regarding the concept of focalisation as used by theorists of fiction and film. Two theoretical points are made in the introduction: firstly, focalisation must be theorised as both perception and manipulation/selection of visual information; secondly, in its application to the analysis of film narratives, Mieke Bal's distinction between internal and external focalisation is to be favoured in film analyses against Seymour Chatman's introduction of the concepts of filter and slant, as the most accurate way to account theoretically for the multiplicity of points of view in the texts and the relationships between them. However, the concepts of external and internal focalisation are slightly changed with respect to Bal's and Rimmon-Kenan's theoretical discussions of them. In the subsequentanalysis of focalisation in The Birds, I explore the narrative position of thebirds and their relationship with the film's heroine, Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) in terms of omniscience and subjectivity. Finally, a consideration of the complex relationships between internal and external focalisation in the text leads to an overall interpretation of the film as a modern fantasy characterised by the dominance of a mysterious but powerful female subjectivity.

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