The Birds

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.

Despite spending most of his career within the realms of the thriller genre, Alfred Hitchcock hasn't restricted himself where variation is concerned. Most of his best work represents a different type of thriller, and The Birds is no different. It is often said that Psycho is Hitchcock's first foray into the horror side of the thriller, and it is indeed; but it's not the complete horror film that The Birds is. Often cited as an obvious influence for Night of the Living Dead, The Birds follows Melanie Daniels as she travels to the seaside town of Bodega Bay with a pair of lovebirds for Mitch Brenner, an eligible bachelor that she met in a pet shop in San Francisco. However, while there the birds of the coastal town begin to attack the residents and so begins a terrifying tale of man's feathered friends waging a war against humanity...

It could be said that the plot of The Birds is ridiculous, and it is. The idea of birds, a type of animal that isn't aggressive, attacking humans despite living with us for millions of years is preposterous and is never likely to happen. However; it is here where the film's horror potency lies. Birds live with us in harmony; we're so used to them that for the most part we don't even realise that they're there, and the idea of something that we don't notice suddenly becoming malicious is truly terrifying. Especially when that something is unstoppable, as the birds are portrayed as being in this film. The fact that the birds' motive is never really explained only serves in making it more terrifying, as it would appear that somewhere along the line they've just decided to attack. Of course, the film could be interpreted as having Melanie's arrival, or the presence of the lovebirds as the cause for it all; but we don't really know. This bounds the film in reality as if there was a reason given, it might be improbable; but there's no true reason given (although there are several theories), so it can't be improbable!

The first forty minutes of the film feature hardly any - if any - horror at all. Hitchcock spends this part of the movie developing the characters and installing their situation in the viewers' minds, so that when the horror does finally come along, it has a definite potency that it would not have had otherwise. In fact, at first the birds themselves come across as a co-star in their own movie as there are brief references towards them, but they never get their full dues. However, once the horror does start, it comes thick and fast. Hitchcock, the master craftsman as always, uses his famous montage effects and never really shows you anything; but because you're being bombarded with so many different shots, you'd never realise it. Many people have tried to copy this technique, but most have failed. Hitchcock, however, has it down to an art and this is maybe the film that shows off that talent the best. There are numerous moments of suspense as well, many of which are truly nail biting. We see the birds amassing and ready to strike - but they don't. And this is much more frightening than showing an attack from the off. Hitchcock knows this. The final thirty minutes of The Birds is perhaps the most thrilling of his entire oeuvre. First, Hitchcock gives us an intriguing situation where numerous inhabitants of the town give their views on the events, and also explains the birds' situation with humans, even giving the audience an angle of expertise from an ornithologist's point of view. He then follows it up with a truly breathtaking sequence of horror that hasn't been matched since for relentless shock value.

Hitchcock has made many great films, and this certainly stands up as one of them. Here, Hitchcock gives a lesson in film directing and creates a truly macabre piece of work in the process. I dread to think what the state of cinema would have been if Hitchcock had never picked up a camera, but luckily for us; he most certainly did.

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.

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.

There is a kind of theory according to which a horror or thriller film would lose all its frightening effect if it did not have a musical support as a backdrop, and its greater or lesser intensity regulates the viewer's tension levels. And this is true, at least in most of these types of movies. But there is always an exception that proves the rule. In The Birds, an iconic film by director Alfred Hitchock (inspired by the eponymous short story by Daphne du Maurier), such musical intrusion was dispensed with, as the director wanted to give voice to these apparently harmless beings that terrorize the population of Bodega Bay (Bernard Herrmann appears in the credits only as sound consultant). The film, which dates from 1963, continues to promote an intense discussion about its meaning and the most varied hypotheses have been put forward, since the ending is left open, with the birds victoriously watching the removal of humans (of course Hitchcock knew that not giving an explanation would contribute to accentuating the mystery and interest that the film arouses, it is not his best film, but it is certainly one of the most enigmatic). Choosing the blonde on duty (one of my favorites) was also a winning bet. Tippi Hedren, the unlikely heroine, perfectly plays the role of the fragile young woman, who is able to stand up to the bloodthirsty bird though. Her image of scared eyes and disheveled hair covering herself with her hand is memorable. As far as I am concerned, the scene dominated by the couple of lovebirds always comes to mind, swinging along the curves, in the convertible on the way to Bodega Bay, inside a cage, without having the right to enjoy the landscape, as a trigger for the revolt of the birds.