Comments on Screen Savour: The Birds (1963)

Thanks for your comments, all. I may need to come ...

2009-05-01T19:36:00.000-04:00

Thanks for your comments, all. I may need to come and revise and extend my remarks because I'm this rather quickly.

What you all have to say is rather interesting, particularly the divergence in opinion between R.D. and MovieMan, who literally function as critical opposites on the film. My own sense is that The Birds is really a troubled work, something Hitchcock struggled with and perhaps even knew (subconsciously?) was not his grand film. It's still an impressive film, I think, even in the ways it falls short, and it's certainly the last film Hitchcock made that raises my pulse — in a good way, at least.

I'm not sure what explains the fact that The Birds is a departure from the high-level entertainment/art Hitchcock had produced sequentially since 1956 (The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho, all in a row!). I'm not sure something can be specifically pinpointed in Hitchcock's career or in his movie-making prowess that would be an *exact* moment things began to change. Certainly, I think, he never had the same control of his material after Pyscho. The 1960s and 1970s were demonstrably cruel to Hitchcock's films (Psycho exempted, for it has more in common with his 1950s ouevre than 1960s). It might explain Ford's decline, too, as MovieMan mentions, although I find myself much more of a fan of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance than he; I think Hitchcock's the sort of director that spoke of the '40s/'50s and to the '40s/'50s in a profoundly unique way, something that didn't exactly translate as well after Psycho. I know this is largely why I continue to be skeptical of films from 1970-onward billed as "Hitchcockian," particularly Brian De Palma's. There's an attitude that was specific to a particular era, and The Birds, while somewhat allegorical (supposedly Hitchcock toyed with the idea of linking the birds to Communists), is simply different. Theme can be repeated and recreated, but there's something inescapable about tone, and De Palma, as far as I'm concerned, has always been tone-deaf in his homage to Hitchcock.

But I've gone astray. Many films Hitchcock seemed particularly proud of during production emerge somewhere in the middle quality of his canon. Obviously he was proud of something like Vertigo, but those films we consider his true masterpieces never received such boastful on-set talking from the director. I'm not sure the drop in quality is as large you suggest (even many 5-star films still pale in comparison to Psycho), but it is entirely noticeable. I understand the criticism of 'takes too long to get going,' which is think is a gamble Hitchcock made and for many doesn't payoff. I enjoy the slow start because I think it gives more emphasis on the middle and ending. Spielberg did it better later (Jaws and Jurassic Park), but I enjoy that angle from Hitchcock. Whether subconscious or not, I think he learned from Psycho that the front half of a film can tremendously affect our reading of the back half, although obviously Psycho does it much, much better.

I just re-watched The Birds for the first time in ...

2009-04-30T21:05:00.000-04:00

I just re-watched The Birds for the first time in years. My conclusions on it are pretty much the same as they've always been (and I think this may have been my first Hitchcock). It doesn't really live up to its potential.

Hedren comes in for a lot of flack, but she's as iconic in her own way as those birds, and it's hard to imagine the film without her. The fact is that the part doesn't really have much depth - though she may not have had the star power of Kelly, she also isn't given much to work with here.

Indeed, the screenplay is surprisingly lackluster. I actually like the first half more than I used to - I once found it boring, now I find it mildly intriguing - but the fact remains that Hitch and his writers don't do enough to make you care about the characters. Psycho, a masterpiece due to Norman Bates, would still be a gripping thriller if it dealt with Marion Crane on the run, but can anyone imagine The Birds working for 2 hours without the birds?

For some reason, in my mind I draw an analogy with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Both are films by great auteurs who had already peaked and were nearing the end of their run. Yet both were just beginning to be celebrated by intellectuals as artists - in a way auteurism, at least in America, arrived just barely too late. The Birds, I think, was the first film to truly capitalize on Hitch's renewed reputation, just as Liberty Valance was the first to truly capitalize on Ford's...at least as pertained to his Westerns. Both films, I think, are flawed, and a bit dated, and a bit, well, literary - many of their conceits work better on paper than in the execution (and here I speak more of the melodramatic set-up meant to be subverted by the birds than of the birds themselves).

On a personal note, and without meaning to implicate these scenes beyond my own probably idiosyncratic reaction, on this viewing, I was surprised that even the famous suspense sequences didn't do as much for me...the jungle gym, the explosion at the restaurant; I admired Hitch's achievement without really feeling it. But then came the ending which is still a small masterpiece, entirely effective from the moment the family bolts themselves into the house and then wait, on edge, for the birds to attack to the moment the car pulls out in a truly gorgeous composite shot (try doing that in CGI).

To me, the final 20-30 minutes redeem the movie, which is otherwise a flawed misstep for Hitchcock. Back to my point about The Birds being perhaps overrated by auteurists at the time...Hitch was celebrated for his classicism when so many filmmakers (many inspired by him in spirit, if not in form) were speeding things up, going wild, mixing and matching as the French New Wave and Italian cinema and British bubbled over and the nascent American New Wave bubbled under the surface. But if you look at where Hitchcock had gone in his previous films, they were much more subjective, taking us further and further into the characters' reality (think Norman Bates or Scotty in Vertigo) and The Birds' vaunted classicism with all those master shots and medium close-ups and precise, almost geometrical editing sense may have been a step backward for the director - a retreat into an intellectualized formalism and away from the feverish, flamboyant cinema of his best work.

At least, I'm inclined to think so. I admire, respect, and am intrigued by the movie yet it doesn't really grab me, at least until the fantastic conclusion.

T.S., I saw "The Birds" for the first time just a ...

2009-04-28T02:15:00.000-04:00

T.S., I saw "The Birds" for the first time just a couple of years ago and was surprised at how positively I responded to it. I watched it again just a couple of weeks later and a third time a few months after that. It just kept getting better and better with each viewing. I wholly concur that the biggest weakness of the movie is the two leads. It's just crying out for Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. But unlike you, I also find the ending to be a letdown. For me the movie just stalls and then suddenly deflates. I don't really have any ideas about how the ending could have been improved, but I do find it too abrupt. And considering the conventional dramatic values of Hitchcock's movies, which always seem to have a clear resolution, I find it too inconclusive. Maybe it's not even the ending itself but the way its shown, so anti-climatically. It would be a long time before Hitch made anything that came close "The Birds." "Frenzy" seemed almost a return to form. And I am fond of the less ambitious but for me quite entertaining "Family Plot."

It's interesting to read this post right after the...

2009-04-26T10:05:00.000-04:00

It's interesting to read this post right after the one you wrote about Psycho, because even given your discussion of the strengths of the movie, there still seems to be a pretty steep drop in quality between the two films, and I would like to know more about why. Yes, Tippi Hedren is not in the same league as Janet Leigh. The Birds seems too leisurely in comparison to the former film; it takes too long to get going. I sometimes find Hitchcock's penchant to shoot outdoor scenes in the studio distracting in The Birds. Sometimes, I can tell that they are fake, and some of the bird-related special effects (such as the tracking shot when the birds attack the children) seem less convincing than the relatively simple black and white effects in Psycho. Overall, I just have problems with the plausibility of The Birds. Have you seen Camille Paglia's book on The Birds?

"On 18 August 1961, residents in the town of Capit...

2009-04-25T16:02:00.000-04:00

"On 18 August 1961, residents in the town of Capitola, California, awoke to find sooty shearwaters slamming into their rooftops, and their streets covered with dead birds. News reports suggested domoic acid poisoning (amnesic shellfish poisoning) as the cause. According to a local newspaper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, director Alfred Hitchcock requested news copy in 1961 to use as "research material for his latest thriller".
WikipediaT.S.said,"The final scenes were even pared back from a larger, more expansive view of the whole community devastated by birds, to (and I think it was for the best) simply watching the car full of our characters slowly roll away. Considering that final shot and the absence of any "The End" title card, the surreal and disturbing effect is heightened to the extreme."I really appreciate the ending of Hitchcock's "Birds," because I feel that it was "open ended."
In other words, Will the birds follow them? (The car with the main characters) and eventually, attack other city, town, etc...hmmm)

Hi! T.S., What a very detailed review and to inter...

2009-04-25T15:48:00.000-04:00

Hi! T.S.,
What a very detailed review and to interject a "baseball analogy," but you, most definitely, covered all the bases in your review of Hitchcock's 1963 film..."The Birds."Thanks,
Deedee,
[Note:]T.S., if your readers, want to "see" what you mentioned about "Hitchcock and Ub Iwerks, the former animator and Walt Disney collaborator,whom he chose to serve as a "special photography adviser on the film "The Bird."

I advise them to invest in the dvd The Birds(The Alfred Hitchcock Collection) because their work together on the special effect is covered on the dvd.