The Birds

Even though Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 horror film, The Birds, is nowadays seen as one of his greatest movies, it (like a lot of his work) didn’t do well when it originally released. The funny thing is that in any other period, this wouldn’t be seen as abnormal for an animal-based horror film, as they usually aren’t treated with the same level of seriousness as their more traditional contemporaries. They’re usually presented as comical, something akin to a B movie, and more interested in the spectacle of a dangerous killer animal rather than the threat that could legitimately come from said idea, with examples like Snakes on a Plane, Black Sheep, Anaconda, Arachnophobia and Piranha being prime showcases. While some have broken this trend like Cujo and Jaws, The Birds was one of the originators of how nature itself could be terrifying.

After having a romantically heated battle of wits with a lawyer named Mitch Brenner (played by Rod Taylor) in a bird store, wealthy socialite Melanie Daniels (played by Tippi Hedren) decides to take him up on his game, tail him to his seaside home, and fulfill his purchase by buying him a set of lovebirds for his younger sister, Cathy’s (played by Veronica Cartwright) birthday. After finding his residence in Bodega Bay, Melanie starts to get closer to Mitch and Cathy, which is picked up on by Mitch’s overly protective mother, Lydia (played by Jessica Tandy) and Mitch’s ex-lover, Annie (played by Suzanne Pleshette), who allows Melanie to rent out a room in her house whilst staying in Bodega Bay. While this little seaside vacation seems nice, things start to get strange when multiple accounts of bird attacks start to prop up, escalating to a point where any variety of bird starts to peck and assault any person that comes within their vicinity. Now trapped without any way of leaving without risk of attack, Melanie and Mitch will need to find a way to keep Cathy and those around them safe while coming to grips with the fact that birds are starting to overtake them.

The Birds may contain a few dollops of melodrama and becomes a little untethered by the end but is still able to result in a very solid movie with great pacing and direction, solid characters with strong performances, and a presentation that is effectively subdued and wonderfully unassuming.

Originally based on a short story written by English author, Daphne du Maurier, as part of her 1952 collection, The Apple Tree, Hitchcock took interest in the premise and decided to make an adaptation, but commissioned the film’s screenwriter, Evan Hunter (who had previously written for Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and the television anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents) to retool a lot of the story, including changing the location from a farmstead in Cornwall to the seaside town of Bodega Bag in California, as well as changing the lead from a disabled World War II male veteran to a classy, wealthy young blond woman.  While du Maurier wasn’t a fan of these changes, this didn’t prevent Hitchcock from restructuring the entire story to add more complex character dynamics and expand upon the original narrative, and it might have been all the better for it. While the premise is pretty good and you could see how the ambiguity and feverous rampage of these winged creatures could be used to deliver cinematic terror, it feels a little simplistic, small in scale and more than likely would’ve resulted in a scenario very similar to the B-movie examples listed above, but through Hunter and Hitchcock’s changes, it adds a surprising level of depth to the earlier portions of the film, with a first act that doesn’t contain any strong hints of horror or terror yet remains very engaging thanks to the strangely well-told storyline and engaging characters.

The film feels very chill and quaint in its personality, with a focus that feels more led by romance and light-hearted banter rather than suspenseful happenstances. While there are nods to the eventual threat and the film does sprinkle in hints of underlying drama that works very nicely with these set-up characters, it, for the most part, keeps things very unsuspecting and traditional, making the resulting havoc all the more unsettling. An expected component of any Hitchcock film, the film is very well paced and does a great job at making what should be hard to find creepy, naturally threatening and dangerous, with the scenes of the birds attacking feeling like something right out of an alien picture. The script is also pretty well written, with each character being given something to work with to feel like more than just hapless victims, the build-up to the bird invasion is decently set up in the background without being too obvious, and the film smartly never provides an actual reason why any of this is happening, allowing the unknown factor to add another level of intimidation onto this idea. With that said, the last act does lose a bit of its clever scripting in exchange for more traditional horror tropes and sequences (which are done well, but lack any sort of depth or narrative nuance), and while the final shot is unforgettably haunting, it does feel like the film sacrificed any sort of conclusive throughline for the sake of a creepy cut-off point.

Another surprising component of this movie is that the characters are surprisingly well-written. Even in traditional horror films of the time, a lot of leading and supporting roles were constructed as very generic and only served as tools for the story to either survive by the skin of their teeth, or die in a brutal (even sometimes humorous) fashion, but whether through Hitchcock’s ability to pick good talent or through Hunter’s strong scripting, these roles are decently fleshed out and offer a much stronger level of investment. They aren’t remarkably deep, but you know about their past, what makes them tick, any struggles that are bothering them, and because of the small cast, it can spend time solely on them rather than fleshing out support who’s only purpose is to die. The acting is also very strong, and everybody gets the assignment and are able to act like a cheery friendly face in the first half, and then stressed-out, panicked and hysterical in the second, with people like Ethel Griffies, Ruth McDevitt, Lonny Chapman, and Doreen Lang pulling this off very well in their bit parts. While sometimes, it can feel a little over-the-top, it never feels inauthentic and even sometimes surpasses what would normally be expected for this genre and this premise.

A lot of controversy has come out over the years surrounding Alfred Hitchcock’s treatment of Tippi Hedren in this movie, with it possibly going into ‘’sexual assault’’ territories, with some even believing that Hitchcock intentionally orchestrating her scenes to be more stressful and painful due to her declining his advances. While the last statement is mostly speculation and Hitchcock is no stranger to torturing women in his movies (which doesn’t really help his case), considering the character she plays goes from a sparky, opinionated women to a traumatized doll who needs to be carried through the climax, it can’t be completely ignored. With that said, Tippi Hedren does a pretty good job, bringing forth her past modelling experience to help make Melanie look and feel confidant and pretty, but her facial expressions and ability to manoeuvre a conversation says a lot about her as a person and highlights her past as a spirited troublemaker and trickster, yet never makes her conceited or privilege, it is a pretty well realized role. Rod Taylor plays a pretty straightforward leading man, but the slightly jovial charm he brings makes him pleasant to be around and results in decent chemistry with Hedren, and Jessica Tandy and Suzanne Pleshette are very good in their parts, get a lot of good scenes during the first half, and don’t go down the expected routes you figured their archetypes would, although their anti-climactic conclusions are a little unfortunate.

It may be a strange comparison to say that this film gives off a personality similar to a Disney film in its first few parts (mainly through the spirited acting, natural grit of the production design, and popping, vibrant color palette), but it’s actually more just a slight similarity as Disney did have a slight hand in making this picture, even though it was distributed by Universal. Disney, or more so animator/technician from Walt Disney Studios, Ub Iwerks, helped construct and complete some of the special effects shots of the birds attacking the city, which definitely do look a little fake nowadays, but feel pretty good for the time and don’t necessarily take you out of the moment when you’re watching it, probably because there were still actual birds on set doing some of the damage. A lot of technical people were instrumental in bringing these bird scenes to life and whether digital or physical, they do their job at making these birds surprisingly scary.

A big factor to this is probably because the film presents them as primal unmotivated animals rather than a beast with an agenda (something that Jaws and Cujo both had). There is no reasoning or purpose, not even a direct figure to focus on, just a swarm of a species that has no other interest than attacking you, and that ambiguity is pretty creepy. This is shown the best during the final act where they try to enter the house, and everything about this scene is very well handled. While the day shots are effective and work well, this scene has such great effective suspense, sound design and cinematography that it is easily the creepiest scene of the film. The lighting is dim and creepily warm, the shots by Robert Burks are nicely framed which results in a few fun reactions shoots, the sound effects of the birds handled by Oskar Sala and Remi Gassman through an electrical musical device brings a distorted, warp creepiness to what are normally soothing cries, and the film’s lack of music for the entire picture may be strange in some sequences, but really makes the environment feel natural and by extension, the eventual onslaught of caws and screams all the more unnerving.

The Birds isn’t a self-aware B-movie that puts Piranhas in a public pool just as an excuse to see a lot of naked women, but rather a film that took what could easily be handled in a poor way and made something that would hold up many years later. The film isn’t overwhelmingly scary and isn’t on the level of Hitchcock’s peak movies like Rear Window or Psycho which are truly one-of-a-kind movies whereas this film does have similarities to other very effective horror films, but it comes pretty close. Through well-crafted direction, strong performances for good characters, and a deceptively peaceful atmosphere that is disrupted by chilling sound design and chaotic visuals, it’s a film that shows Hitchcock is even capable of making fowls terrifying to a casual moviegoer.