The Birds (1963)

 Tagline-Suspense and shock beyond anything you have seen or imagined!

    Hello friends! I have a question for you: If you had to choose, which animal do you think would be most likely to overthrow or even wipe out the human race? Cats? Domestic cats think they already own the world so they wouldn't want to wipe out all their potential human slaves.  That'd be a waste of labor.   

    Insects surely?  Locusts can completely strip vast areas of land and crops, leaving humans and livestock to starve. Mosquitoes are easily the most active and bloodthirsty (literally) killers in the world, infecting and killing millions of people with diseases such as malaria, West Nile virus, and dengue.

    What if birds went bad? Imagine that there's a magical "button" that if pressed could somehow influence the birds themselves to attack. Even if we don't count the diseases that birds can carry and spread, humanity would be in big trouble. 

     With millions of pigeons in many major cities around the world, there'd certainly be chaos if pigeons were to attack . I don't have to remind my Australian viewers of the evil, flying, ball of bloodlust known as the magpie. Even without the hypothetical "murder button", magpies are already aggressive, dive-bombing cyclists if the victim accidentally strays too close to their nest.

    Crows and ravens are disturbingly intelligent and are probably plotting my demise as I write this. Pelicans are just really bizarre and unpredictable in general, (seriously they will try to eat anything, doesn't matter if it's larger than them, and if videos on social media are anything to go by, they will also try to devour you and your children.)  Large birds such as the cassowary have directly killed (meaning killing with talons and beak, not causing a fatal bicycle accident or car crash) 2 people in the past century, which doesn't sound like much but that's two more direct kills than any other bird.

    Anyway, I'll stop with the avian paranoia. With all that in mind let's get into the movie! Spoiler warning from here on! The Birds is an American film made in 1963. It stars Tippi Hedren as Melanie Daniels and Rod Taylor as Mitch Brenner. The legendary Alfred Hitchcock was in charge of directing. Evan Hunter wrote the screenplay. 

    Melanie (Hedren) meets a man named Mitch (Taylor) while in a San Francisco pet shop. It's a standard movie encounter where they don't like each other initially but you know they'll get together by the end. Of course this eventual affection is helped along by them going through a shared traumatic experience, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. With the help of a kind schoolteacher named Annie, (played by Suzanne  Pleshette) Melanie tracks Mitch and finds his address in a small coastal town called Bodega Bay. Mitch is staying with his mother, Lydia (played by Jessica Tandy) and his young sister named Cathy (Veronica Cartwright).   

    After leaving the house on a boat (Mitch's house is across the bay) without finding Mitch, Melanie gets  attacked by a random seagull. Mitch intercepts Melanie in his boat and takes her to the local hospital. Unfortunately this one, seemingly chance bird strike is just a sample of the terror and death about to hit the sleepy town of Bodega Bay... 

    The Birds is a very quiet film up until the seagull attacks Melanie. Then the suspense steadily rises and rises until it reaches a boiling point. The film is fantastic at making ordinary things, such as crows gathering on a playground) incredibly terrifying. (Seriously in that particular scene, that nursery rhyme that the kids were singing in the school lasts an agonizingly long 4 minutes, and the flock is just getting bigger and bigger for the entirety of the song and then wham! (No not the musical artist, though the sudden appearance of them in the movie would be quite shocking as well,)  the shot moves to the playground again and there's more than 40 birds!) 

    Following a couple of alarming incidents of birds crashing through the house, and Cathy's birthday party getting ruined by the bloodthirsty birds attacking the guests, Mitch's mother Lydia gets very paranoid and believes Melanie is somehow causing this whole avian attack situation. This opinion isn't helped by the discovery of Lydia's neighbor, dead with his eyes pecked out and surrounded by dead birds and broken glass.

    From here the movie shifts tone and becomes more of a survival thriller than a drama.  Our protagonists decide that going out in public is too dangerous so they board up the house to try and wait it out. This doesn't work and the movie ends with Mitch carrying a traumatized Melanie, who was previously attacked by ravens in the attic, cautiously to his car (which is completely encircled by birds) and somehow driving off without angering them.

    The Birds received mixed reviews at the time with some abhorring the movie and some loving it. Over time though the film's reception was much better received. The movie was based on a story by author Daphne du Maurier. She also wrote the fantastic Gothic book, Rebecca in 1938. Daphne did not like how the film The Birds changed the original setting from the book, a farm in Cornwall, England to a town in southern California.

    The controversial relationship between lead actress and director was razor thin to say the least. Hedren accused Hitchcock of making improper advances toward her. She made these allegations after his death in 1980. Hedren was also bitter about not being told about the final act in the attic. Originally they had planned to have animatronic birds attack but at the last second they switched them out for live birds. The shock on Hedren's face is quite real!

    The film was nominated for two Oscars, one for Best Effects and another for Special Visual Effects. It was also nominated for Best Motion Picture in the Edgar Allan Poe Awards. It won a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer-Female. 

    Probably the most prestigious award that The Birds won is a spot in the National Film Registry. This is a collection of films deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The National Film Registry includes such films as The Dark Knight, Jaws, Mary Poppins, The Matrix, Toy Story, The Empire Strikes Back, The Bridge on The River Kwai, Gandhi, Planet of the Apes and The Sound of Music. I believe there's around 800 films on the list currently.

I think that The Birds is one of the more underrated films that Hitchcock has been in charge of. It's a bit of a slow burn compared to a movie like Vertigo but it's certainly not lacking suspense. It's definitely a classic that everyone should see, especially prospective filmmakers, because CGI had a long, long way to go yet the effects people did some pretty revolutionary things, combining matte paintings with practical sets and effects with seamless style.

Ok that's it for now, thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Conrad Smith