Year: 1963
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Country: US
Language: English
Tipi Hedren stars as a wealthy San Francisco socialite, who pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people in increasing numbers and with increasing viciousness.
Based on a 1952 short story by Daphne du Maurier, The Birds is grisly, brooding and savage. Hitchcock has no conventional score, but instead makes a soundtrack out of dive-bombing gulls and crows. One may wonder if the external events (bird invasion) is a reflection of internal events in each character's mind (love birds= Hedren's love? Crows= emotional distress?) and that would certainly be typical of Hitchcock, but I'm not sure the characters are well developed enough to make this claim. The Birds is a little bit of a miss, because the patented Hitchcockian "psychological horror" slowly devolves into "AHHHH! The birds are clawing my EYES!!!"
It was not difficult to scare a 1960's audience with gore, and I certainly think critics at the time mistook the disgust for blood, mayhem and missing eye sockets for genuine fear. Personally, I was bored by this picture, which had all the contraptions of a B-movie, just with better cast and a bigger budget. While the special effects, were done at Walt Disney Studios by animator/technician Ub Iwerks, may have been great at the time (though I've seen better from that period) they are laughably dated by the standards of today. Hitchcock has made classics like Vertigo which stand the test of time, but The Birds has been outdone by Birdemic: Shock and Terror.
The Birds certainly isn't a great picture, it's not even a "good picture". How this glorified heap of trash is still being talked about in 2015 and beyond is beyond me. Sure, the ending is memorable and slightly spooky, but that brings it up to a Shyamalan flick at best. Thankfully this picture didn't represent a permanent slump for the Director, as he would make more memorable, but often overlooked, films. 0.5/5
There are two important things with which I wish to preface this post:
ReplyDelete1. It is ALWAYS okay to like or not to like a film.
2. Just because you do or do not like a film, it doesn't make said film a good or a bad film.
While shock horror certainly exists in The Birds, I must say, anyone who knows Hitchcock, knows this isn't a focal point. Why is it there? Well, it certainly has its place in this kind of Hitchcock movie. Birds by themselves seem relatively harmless. It was important to establish what kind of damage they could do. Once that is done, it is hardly referenced again. - Like you say, Hitchcock is The Master of Suspense, and The Birds is yet another study in his amazing techniques of suspense.
Take this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydLJtKlVVZw - The incessant soundtrack of children singing a more or less gibberish song is chilling enough on its own. The imagery of Hedren with her back turned to a playground, intercut with ONLY THE AUDIENCE seeing a couple of birds added to the playground each time. Finally, Hedren discovers a bird in the air, flying towards the playground. Hedren not knowing what she is about to see. Even the audience is surprised when the playground, in a matter of seconds, goes from 5-8 birds, to a playground positively covered in birds.
Take this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xei_IKhp9tU - And just listen to the conversation before the birds attack. It really doesn't get clearer than that.
The film is of course built on examples like these, and some even better, like the birthday scene at the beginning of the film, but I wasn't able to find those clips on youtube.
One last thing: Yes, Vertigo decisively stands the test of time. So does The Birds. Vertigo is a mystery drama with similar underlying themes as any other Hitchcock film, including The Birds. The Birds used, though very few, special effects. They have their place in the story, but have no effect on the themes and greater story. They also don't matter in critical analysis. And if they did, Interstellar is a far far better movie than A Space Odyssey. I hope that illustrates my point adequately.