The Birds

This is one of Hitchcock's most well-known movies. Along with Psycho, it's the movie that most people identify with him. Many pages have been written about it and surely there will be more. I know that the superb technical aspects of the movie have been discussed a lot, so I'll try to focus on something I noticed yesterday when I watched it.

It's scarier when there are no birds on screen. The tension, the silence, the uncertainty, the mystery. That's what suspense is about.

I was amazed of how carefully Hitchcock builds the suspense in this movie. You watch the birds standing there, and they do not move, they are just waiting. Even when you think they are dumb something tells you they are thinking. They are analyzing your moves.

This was possible with the aid of a top-notch screenplay, and great performances of the actors. This was probably the most difficult film for Hitchcock, specially for the technical aspects that were involved, but when you watch it, it really was worth the pain.

The main plot is well-known: Melanie Daniels(Tippi Hedren),a young girl goes to Bodega Bay looking for Mitch Brenner(Rod Taylor),a handsome man she met in San Francisco, when suddenly, the birds start attacking humans by no reason. Pretty straight forward, and by this date very outdated, but Hitchcock adds his magic and the script spices this with the very complex relationships between the characters.

The complex relationship between Mitch and his mother Lydia(played by Jessica Tandy), and the conflict that she has with Melanie is very interesting and brings back memories from Psycho. Also, Melanie's relationship with her own mother and the bond that she creates with Lydia and Mitch's 11 years old sister Cathy(Veronica Cartwright) is fascinating.

The scene when the four of them are trapped inside the house with the birds waiting outside is classic; not only is, as I wrote above, a perfect example of the use of suspense, it is an awesome study of the characters and how their relation grows. I think that this particular movie was main inspiration for George A. Romero's claustrophobic climax in his landmark film "Night of the Living Dead"(1968).

The technical aspects may be the focus of many studies, but the characters deserve to be praised, even the support cast with a few lines develop a personality of their own. The restaurant scene is Hitchcock at his best with witty dialogs that are both humorous and creepy. Very good ensemble.

Overall, this is an awesome movie, many reviewers have said it, I know. But I wanted to point that beyond the technical advances this experimental movie features, it is a perfect example of why Alfred Hitchcock is considered, "The Master of Suspense".

9/10. Classic.

I've been listening to a podcast about Alfred Hitchcock in the past few weeks, so I decided to take a look and see which of his films I could watch with minimal fuss. "The Birds" was, of all things, on regular non streaming television (I know!) last week, so I set the recorder and watched it for the first time in a while. I have to say that, despite a couple of flaws, I really rather enjoyed it.

Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) heads to a small coastal town on the west coast of America, to connect with Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor). The pairs awkward courtship is interrupted by moments of unusual and violent behaviour from the bird population of the town. The scale of the violence increases with each incident, causing the Daniels and Brenner to barricade themselves in Brenner's farmhouse.

Interestingly, watching it today what "The Birds" feels most like, particularly once you get to the farmhouse assault is a zombie film, with a mostly unseen force banging on the doors and desperate fortifications that have been hastily assembled. It does take quite a while to get to the bird attacks, but I did enjoy the slightly salacious romantic comedy drama that the film is, prior to the shift into becoming a horror film. Hedren and Taylor are a delightful pair, but there's intrigue afoot with his former girlfriend now the schoolteacher in town and his mother seemingly unhappy about any potential romance.

Admittedly, the composite work on mixing bird footage in with the filmed pieces hasn't aged well and, though I don't need my films to each be tied up in a nice bow, the ending remains one of the most ". . . Wait, what?. . ." moments in all of film. To describe it as anticlimactical doesn't do the term justice.

I still enjoyed it though and, with certain caveats, would recommend it.

Hitchcock bragged that The Birds was pure fantasy, with no connection to real life (as we know it). I've seen this movie a few times and I still wonder what it "means," if it has a specific meaning. It might just be a horror film about preternatural killer birds, but I humbly suggest that it might, in a sense, be an allegory about the Nuclear Paranoia of the era. Not an exact allegory like "Pilgrim's Progress," but perhaps a parable, or a fable if you like, with the birds standing in for all those forces ready to kill innocent people for no good reason. "The Birds" is so richly suggestive that there's an Oedipal theme as well, and some hints that Mitch isn't a very admirable guy, and so on... very Kubrickian, but predating "2001" by 4 or 5 years. It's a film that can simply entertain, or frighten, or hold one's interest, without begging for interpretation. But it's fun to wonder what the writer and director were thinking, and how much the actors/actresses knew of the artistic intent of the filmmakers. It's interesting too that after "Psycho," with its classic musical score, Hitchcock made "The Birds" a 2-hour film with no music - except the squawks, clucks and cries of The Birds. Wonderful picture.

1963 was the year and they are still here, mesmerizing, enthralling, entertaining from beginning to end and no music. The sounds of the birds, the attacks, are the music the movie needs. Tippi Hedren, a Hitchcock blonde, head to toe. We follow her as if we knew her and Rod Taylor, well, we know we know him, so it all moves like a potential romantic comedy but there is something in the air that doesn't allow us that frame of mind. Jessica Tandy introduces another Hitchcockian character, the castrating mother and it's wonderful and suspenseful, her slow surrender to Melanie Daniels. It must be a sign of greatness when you can watch The Birds, 60 years after its debut and enjoy it as if was yesterday.

Melanie Daniels meets Mitch Brenner at a pet shop where he has come to buy some birds for his young sister. They have a conflict of words but he sparks her interest and she travels up to his small town to see him again. Daniels stays in the town for the weekend despite the tension between her and Brenner's mother. However this is not the only source of worry as the locals begin to notice that the birds are acting out of character and showing signs of aggression.

I came to this film because my mother mentioned she was scared of birds as a result of seeing this when she was young. So I went for it with highs hopes that were not disappointed on the whole. The basic plot is just that – basic. But it allows plenty of disturbing scenes of bird attack as well as a nice slow build. The effects have dated and it doesn't look as impressive now, but it still has an impact. More importantly the film has a rich side-plot about themes that carry over from Psycho about mother's and sons. Not quite as far out as that film, this still has plenty of meat for anyone looking to analyse it further.

Hedren is OK in the lead but I found her to be just giving the same performance as every `dangerous blonde' does in Hitchcock films. But she is the predator of the film and she does it pretty well. Taylor is a good stock B movie actor type but looking at him I couldn't help picturing Cary Grant doing the role and it took away from Taylor. Tandy looked old even then, but she does really well with a complex role of the mother. Pleshette is a little annoying but still ok

Most people see this as a horror film, but it is much more than that. The ending is quite low key but it worked well with the overall feeling of menace in the birds, but it's worth remembering that this is not the ending Hitchcock wanted. His first choice, the Golden Gate bridge covered in birds, couldn't be done due to a tight budget.

Overall this is a great bit of Hitchcock that works on several levels. The horror will have you sweating when walking through groups of pigeons in city centres and the subtext will keep you in the pub for several hours.