The Birds

No it's not my favourite Hitchcock film but whenever I start watching it I can't stop. This movie works on two levels which make the film so classic and mesmerising. One as a pure cliche but brilliantly scary Horror film. And two as an amazing journey into human behaviour both in and out of an emergency and surreal situations. Such classic and emotional scenes. Those who give this film only 1/10 I think have not really thought about the ins and outs and the underlying emotions and psychology that Alfred Hitchcock deploys in all his films. This is truly a frightening horror story though and because it's so violently scary and why - I have always been a little frightened around birds - is why I do mark it slightly down from other classically psychological Hitchcock films. But also due to the acting and characterisation by such veterans and newbies, still a masterpiece of cinema.

I still to this day have to watch it through my fingers covering my eyes - worrying about eyes being pecked out by those Birds! This is actually a lesson to all horror film makers to study to work out just much to show and how much restrain to show when doing horror!

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.

Critics have wrung their hands over what this movie really means since it was released in 1963. So I may as well take a stab at it also (pun intended). On a superficial level, the movie is just what it appears to be - another Hitchcock horror film designed to scare the wits out of you and purchase large amounts of popcorn and soda to keep the theater going. After seeing how bad things can get in the movie, you are happy to resume your life. Beyond that, the movie seems to want to take us to a place suitable for comparing humans and birds, both similarities and differences. Like birds, humans tend to peck on an individual level and as a group. Human behaviors such as possessiveness and fear can also lead to loosing freedom and being confined to a cage. Both birds and humans are also territorial. Human characteristics like intelligence, planning, and vengeance are also imputed to the birds in this movie. All this could conceivable create conflict when the interests of birds and humans are at odds, such as competing for fish and roosting space in a seaside town. Annie (Suzanne Pleshette) starts to look almost like just another crow perched on the hill watching on Mitch whose hen-pecking mother apparently chased her off wrecking her romance with Mitch. Melanie is similarly attacked by a gull in her desperate bay crossing for Mitch's attention. She learns quickly that the bay is for gull's to hunt, not rich SF debutantes. The soap operatic-level plot with dysfunctional characters and town ultimately beg for resolution and that's when Hitchcock does what he does best - mercilessly dispatch them with horror and disaster that would school even the likes of Irwin Allen. As the birds really go on the offensive, and things start blowing up, we are shown the town from the crazed, fluttering bird's eye view. One can infer that the birds are fed up with humans occupying their town and living space. The movie reveals two completely different, but competing species, one a feathered descendant of the dinosaurs, and the other from apes. Thoroughly trounced, the humans retreat and the birds re-capture their territory. One is left to ponder whether two completely different species can ever co-exist and live in peace, or is it always a powder keg of age-old grievances just waiting to blow.

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.

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.