WHISTLING SHADE |
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Melanie Daniels Smokes a Cigarette in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds
This is dramatic irony.
We know what she does not— the crow, the horrid hop, the jungle gym a host of claws.
She is dazed, pale of complexion. Fetching in her green suit, but facing the wrong direction.
We see the murderous bunch converge in hibbeldy-hobbeldy disarray while she worries that cigarette away.
Then one errant raven grabs her eye, and irony ends. In the flock-darkened day, she sidesteps away and is safe.
We know that a convenient escape portends devastation, a riot of claws. She knows this too, and is not wrong.
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