00:25:23Mental and relational image · SHOT EVIDENCE
The first strike over the bay: a demark is not another mark
At which moment—appearance, dive, impact, or wound—does the decisive change occur, and which shot actually reroutes the established human–bird relation?
Film and viewing version
The Birds · The Birds · Alfred Hitchcock / 阿尔弗雷德·希区柯克 · 1963
Reviewed passage by passage on the 01:59:24 single-part Bilibili repost. 00:25:23 is the still anchor and 00:25:00—00:25:42 is the atlas's working boundary. Bilibili's official feature page ep291861 runs 01:59:30, so the two carriers cannot share second-level coordinates.
Version boundary: The timecodes on this page apply only to the named viewing carrier. Restorations, differing leaders, or platform transcodes may shift them.
Passage and still timecodes
approx. 00:25:00—00:25:42 (00:25:23 still holds the gull passing as Melanie covers her head)
The window locates the passage; its boundaries remain approximate
The passage window and still anchor are separate coordinates: the Bilibili still at 00:25:23 was checked on 2026-09-01; it does not turn an approximate passage on another carrier into exact bounds.
Visible facts
- 01
Melanie pilots the skiff alone toward the dock while Mitch watches her approach; the bay crossing still advances toward a clear goal.
- 02
A single gull dives from above, strikes past her head, and leaves a wound; the film then cuts toward Mitch on shore and Melanie's injured reaction.
Audible facts
- 01
The skiff engine, water, and harbour ambience sustain the ordinary continuity of the crossing; a sharp bird cry cuts in with the impact.
- 02
No explanatory dialogue supplies a cause for the attack; Mitch can respond only through calls and gestures after the anomaly has occurred.
Action relation
The crossing originally carries Melanie toward Mitch's dock. The gull interrupts this goal-directed action from outside, so landing immediately becomes a matter of treating a wound and questioning the attack.
Temporal relation
The sudden attack invites the spectator to reinterpret the earlier caged birds, lovebirds, and environmental birds: the same kind of creature has shifted from display, gift, and landscape to attack.
Conceptual reading
Cinema 1, p. 204 makes the first gull attacking the heroine a demark. If a clip begins only after the wound or supplies no prior habitual series to be rerouted, the card cannot establish the claim by itself. Nor can the gull be called another mark: it departs from and reroutes an established habitual series.
Concepts used in the judgement
- Relation-imageimage-relation · SCENE SUPPORT
The primary text directly identifies the first attacking gull as a demark: deviation in relational position precedes any psychological explanation of the bird.
→ - Mental-imageimage mentale · SCENE SUPPORT
The spectator must compare the series before and after the attack; the object of judgement is the bird's relation to person, environment, and use, not the shape of one bird.
→ - Sensory-motor schemaschème sensori-moteur · ADJACENT
The strike briefly interrupts the crossing, but landing, treatment, and inquiry restore local responses; one interruption does not by itself make a time-image.
→
Primary and scholarly coordinates
- 01Cinema 1: The Movement-Image
Minnesota 1986 translation, chapter 12, p. 204
Page 204 directly states that “the first gull which strikes the heroine is a demark.” The primary text does not supply the atlas's 00:25:23 carrier coordinate; the atlas is responsible for the window and shot facts.
- 02Deleuze’s Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images
David Deamer, Deleuze’s Cinema Books (2016), pp. 132–137
Deamer reconstructs the operative difference among mark, demark, and symbol: a habitual series, an anomalous term departing from that series, and a concrete term bearing abstract relations. The pages provide criteria rather than classifying these three passages for the atlas.
Terminological coordinates
Chapter relations
Viewing and still sources
Direct scene · Watch 00:25:00–00:25:42 continuously, first establishing the purpose and environmental continuity of the crossing, then marking the gull's entry, impact, wound, and Mitch's response in sequence. The timecode applies only to the 01:59:24 single-part repost BV1jJ411g7Yj; the official feature page, Blu-ray, and other streaming editions require fresh location.