Daily Times

Alfred Hitchcock was arguably one of the most influential filmmakers in history and the unquestioned master of suspense. Born to English parents on the outskirts of London in 1988, he was persuaded by US movie producers to move to Hollywood in 1939, soon after the success of his initial films in England.

In the US, he would go on to win fame by producing movies such as Psycho, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Rear Window. In 1980, just a few months before he died, Queen Elizabeth II bestowed the knighthood upon him.

Hitchcock, in his own words, capitalised on the fact that, “We all like putting our toe in the cold water of fear.” At another time, he said the secret ingredient in his films involved making “the most innocent member of the cast the murderer” and “making the next-door neighbour a dangerous spy.”

Psycho is regarded as his best production. A young man at the Bates Motel is the agent at the front desk. He is as nondescript as any agent, totally harmless at first glance. But strange things keep happening at the motel for which there is no obvious explanation. The audience is at the edge of their seats when the music builds up into a crescendo and then a woman’s primeval scream is heard coming out of a shower. The agent has stabbed her.

We are left bewildered. Later, we see the agent explaining his actions dutifully to his mother who is sitting in a rocking chair. And then, camera turns on her and reveals to us the corpse of an old woman. She has been dead for years. The killer is a psychologically disturbed young man who has preserved her body, kept her alive in his mind, and takes orders from her.

The Bates Motel has since been seen by hundreds and thousands of tourists on their bus tours of the Universal Studios in Los Angeles. It sits up ominously on a hill, silently evoking the shower scene.

After producing Psycho, Hitchcock turned his attention to filming an adaptation of a short story by Daphne du Maurier which had come out in 1952. It was called The Birds. He produced the movie in 1963, which some now only remember as the year in which JFK was shot.

Hitchcock, in his own words, capitalised on the fact that, “We all like putting our toe in the cold water of fear.” At another time, he said the secret ingredient in his films involved making “the most innocent member of the cast the murderer” and “making the next-door neighbour a dangerous spy”

The movie focuses on a series of sudden, unexplained violent bird attacks on the people living in Bodega Bay, a small fishing village located on the Pacific Coast in Sonoma County, California, about an hour north of San Francisco.

Even though it has been 55 years since the movie was produced to critical acclaim, it continues to have an approval rating of 96 per cent based on 52 critic reviews cited in the widely quoted website, Rotten Tomatoes.

The movie shows Hitchcock’s total mastery of the art of creating suspense. He does so, by focusing on the build-up sequence. It begins by showing a man talking to a woman in a shop. He is interested in buying a pair of love birds in a cage.

There is not a hint of what is to come later. And then, one day, innocuous flying birds appear out of the blue and become some of the most terrifying villains in movie history. Who would have thought that they would be attacked by possessed birds? Certainly, not the characters in the film.

During a recent visit, while savouring fish tacos at The Fishetarian in Bodega Bay, I picked up a copy of the local paper, The Bohemian, and found an article about the film by Tom Gogola.

Gogola analysed the reasons why the birds attacked humans. He said that according to many “Hitchcock scholars and scientists, the murderous crows in the film were inspired by actual events that took place in Monterey Bay in 1961, when dying, sooty shearwaters started to fly headlong into people’s houses. Scientists eventually determined that the birds were disoriented and distressed because they’d been poisoned by domoic acid — yes, the same shellfish poison that has conspired to end or otherwise limit several recent Dungeness crab seasons — and cripple the Bodega crabbing fleet in the process.”

Three buildings that were featured in the film are still around: a school, a church, and a cafe. The Potter School, which was built in 1873, held classes in grades one through eight in two large classrooms on the first floor for several decades. The upstairs functioned as a multi-use room and a community hall also exists.

At some point, the building was condemned and sold to the highest bidder. In 1962, the school building was used to film The Birds. The building has been fully restored to its original conditions and has served as the residence for three generations of a family which still lives in it.

The St. Theresa of Aliva is a Catholic Church. Masses are held on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

The Bird’s Café is now a fine dining restaurant called The Tides Wharf along the waterfront.

There is plenty to see in Bodega Bay and beyond. It is located within easy driving distance of three other attractions. About an hour and twenty minutes to the south on Highway 1 is Point Reyes, home to countless seabirds, a famed herd of Tule Elk, and a gorgeous set of beaches. About an hour away is Tomales Bay and the town of Inverness, host to a fine Czechoslovak restaurant and an all-American eatery called The Fog Kitchen. And an hour or so away to the north of Bodega Bay is Fort Ross, from where the Russians once carried out their fur trade.

The only challenge faced by the tourist is driving on Highway 1, which is perched perilously just above the waves and full of hairpin bends. It is a challenge to drive even in broad daylight on a clear day. I often found myself avoiding bicyclists who were doing their best to pedal up or down its steep gradients. And there was the inevitable encounter with an impatient local driver who kept appearing in the rear view mirror.

The country roads that branch off the highway were poorly maintained, like the ones I had seen in Cambodia, Fiji, or Thailand. A secondary challenge was the weather along the Pacific Coast, notorious for being windy and cold.

But despite all these challenges, Bodega Bay is a prime tourist destination and definitely worth a visit. No one has ever come back from there either bored or disappointed.

The writer is a defence analyst and economist. He has authored Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan (Ashgate Publishing, 2003)

Published in Daily Times, July 13^th 2018.