The Birds – Mitch Brenner’s Unnamed Neighbour (Richard Deacon)
by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
Redefining the blink-and-you’ll-miss-him school of Bit Playerosity, meet Richard Deacon. His fleeting appearance in Hitchcock’s 1963 adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s short atmosphere study never fails to jolt me with its overpowering duality of aggressive banality and awkward beauty.
Famed predominantly for his swag of kitschy television performances –most notably The Dick Van Dyk Show and Leave it to Beaver, Deacon’s only other big screen appearance (if it is fair to include The Birds in that list) is in the uncredited role of Dr Bassett in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
The Birds begings with Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) up to a Paris Hilton-degree of poor little rich girl shenanigans. The recipient of the current moment of high spirited tomfoolery is Mitch Brenner, a lawyer who happily calls out Daniels on her princess bullshit in the films opening pet shop sequence. She decides upon an campaign of flirtatious backlash, taking the form of a gift of the two lovebirds Brenner was in the store to purchase.
But in true Hitchcock style, Brenner has returned home to Momma. Daniels is delivered this blow to her blow-waved vengeance by the unnamed neighbour, played by Deacon.
His lines are forgettable, his function is little more than to deliver the pure exposition that will propel the story along its desired trajectory. No, Mitch isn’t here. Yes, he’s in the country. No, you can’t leave the birds here. No, I can’t look after them – I am not sticking around either.
In a fantasy parallel universe, I picture the Hitchcock film where Deacon does not exist. Daniels walks down the corridor unhindered, knocks on Brenner’s door and receives no answer. She figures he’ll be home soon and leaves the birds on his doorstep. She leaves, tottering dizzily away to one of the many soirees or tennis matches that fill her usual weekends. A few days later, Brenner returns and finds a birdcage full of rotting lovebird carcasses and a sassy cutesy pie note. He swiftly calls the police and a lengthy stay behind bars would follow a chase by men in white coats wielding novelty human-sized butterfly nets.
While this fantasy may have provided an interesting alternative for the always-doomed sequel, the fact remains that Brenner’s neighbour is there. Daniels takes the lovebirds with her, goes to Brenner’s house near the water and a romantic escapade crashes headlong into a feathered, squawking doomsday.
Deacon’s role was in many ways disposable, able to be played by one of a million other balding middle-aged men in a dashing suit and horn-rimmed glasses. In terms of content at least, Brenner’s neighbour has little more significance than to deliver his line and fuck off – a character defined by pure narrative functionality.
What Deacon manages to bring to the role, however, is my first moment of genuine discomfort in the film. The blandness of the moment is balanced by the haunting melodic tones with which the lines themselves are delivered – the sing-song qualities of Deacon’s voice that have so offered rendered him the height of camp in this instance provide a moment that is truly out of synch. He does not over act – his demeanour is small, calm, and (again) functional. But the sound of his voice is almost hypnotic, suggesting a reality that is everything and anything but the humdrum moment of urban living in which this exchange takes place.
At the end of the scene, he gives Ms Daniels a lingering look up and down with a slowness, confidence and cool detachment of a seasoned sexual predator. There is no time to process this, and the scene is over in an otherwise innocuous flash. But That Voice, punctuated by That Look, establishes early on in the film that danger – and beauty – comes in all shapes and sizes.
