The Birds is one of Alfred Hitchcock's most notorious films aside from Psycho. I actually had a very difficult time choosing which of these to watch for the blog. I asked many people and a large majority said they liked The Birds better, which is why I eventually decided to watch this film. I had someone make a very valid point that Psycho is the reason that The Birds was able to be made since it was so successful, but in the end the majority said this film, so it will be the topic of this week's post. Hitchcock is a legend in the film-making industry. Out of all the films he's made, I've only seen Vertigo and I was lucky enough to see it in the theaters when they had a Fathom Event for it. Hitchcock is known for testing the possibilities of storytelling through the use of filming techniques and Vertigo is one of those films where he used new or underused techniques to create visual effects that created a feeling of vertigo. I'm not aware of any special techniques that he uses in this film, but it will be interesting to see what he does with it.
The movie is about flocks of birds becoming aggressive and attacking the people in this small town. What causes them to do this, I have no idea, but I'm sure I'll find out. Tippi Hedren is infamous for her role in this film. I saw an interview with her on Eli Roth's History of Horror on AMC and she was discussing certain aspects of filming with Hitchcock. She had asked him why she would run up the stairs instead of doing something else. She wanted clarification for her motivation to do something that seemed foolish. His answer was, "Because I told you to." I couldn't help but giggle at that one. It's just like an actor to need to truly understand the character they're portraying, so it's a completely normal question. On the other hand, it's just like a director to have a specific idea in mind for their film and to want to just do the scene as planned with minimal fuss. I love hearing stories like that. Just something simple and small, but it can feel so heavy when it comes to the people involved. Since I don't know much else about the movie, it's about time I watched it.
Can I just say, I'm glad we got away from credits in the beginning of the film! They are far better at the end of the film. The movie stopped so suddenly that I felt I got metaphorical whiplash from the sudden stop at the end. In general, I enjoyed this film. I felt it had strong characters and actors that performed the roles well. There were some questions on motivations in the story, like why the kids wouldn't run INTO the house at the birthday party instead of around the yard, where the birds clearly were. When common sense is ignored, it's a bit hard for my mind to ignore. The film follows an affluent woman known for acts that wouldn't be seen as appropriate for a woman of her status. Getting into a Roman fountain, for instance. She meets a man who knows of her, but it doesn't seem like a kindly meeting. She decides to play a bit of a prank on him by finding out who he is and where he lives. She winds up driving to a town about an hour and a half away just to prove something to him, since she apparently doesn't have anything better to do with her day. While there, the birds of the area begin to act aggressively, escalating to full blown attacks on the entire populous. The film gives you no reason for their change in behavior. No chemicals being released, no virus or fungus or bacteria to blame. I can't say I like that about the movie much. I like a reason why. Something like that wouldn't happen with no justification. I feel like Hitchcock's mentality in his conversation with Tippi, when he didn't feel the need to explain in greater detail, can carry over to this. It was his film, his vision and it's his decision to reveal as much or as little as he wanted. After a number of attacks, escalating in severity, the main characters and their family decide they're going to leave the town. And that's the sudden end to the movie. They just drive away. No knowledge of how this occurred, why it happened, what happens after the family get her to a hospital and if her father finally took the bird attacks seriously. I guess it says something about the story that I felt so involved that I needed the answers to even the most mundane questions.
I was impressed with the cast and a bit shocked at some of the people in the film. I had no idea that Jessica Tandy was in this movie! I recognized her right away since I loved her so much in *batteries not included. This was about 25 years earlier, so it was amazing to see her so young looking, even in her 60s. She did an amazing job portraying a slightly controlling and overbearing mother, though there were times she acted more like a grandmother to Cathy than her actual mother. I can't tell if that was intentional or not, but knowing how Hitchcock planned everything for his films, I'm assuming that it was. She was a complex character and it was a real joy to see her on the screen in this role. She went on to work in movies like Cocoon and Fried Green Tomatoes in her later years, as well, and those were the roles that stood out to me more so than any other roles she had. She always had a soft spot in my heart from *batteries not included and Cocoon especially. Then there was Veronica Cartwright. She plays the younger sister, Cathy. I recognized her eyes and mouth, it's a unique look that is purely hers an no one else's. I had to go look up who she was and what she looked like in later years to realize that she's the same person that was in Witches of Eastwick! That's a movie I love to watch every now and then and my brain plays scenes on repeat even more frequently than that. Veronica Cartwright stood out to me in her role of the religious woman who always knew that the Devil lived in their midst. She was also in the original Alien movie, as well. I had a similar response to seeing her as I did to Natalie Wood in West Side Story, only in reverse. Sometimes it's hard to recognize someone when looking at them at such varying stages in life, especially comparing their adult looks to their child/teen selves. But it's great to see that they were able to keep up with the industry despite a common issue of getting pigeon-holed into a specific role.
It's funny how there were things so glaringly different from the current times we're in, but left me with a bit of a nostalgia for it, too. In the most fancy pet store I've ever seen, Melanie dials a rotary phone using the end of her pencil to dial each number. I remember doing that as a child with our rotary phone before we got a touchtone phone. It's funny how I bridge the eras of old and new, so I have the experiences of both. Living through the switch over from rotary to touchtone to pager to cell phone all in just a 20 year timespan is a lot of change in a short amount of time. Then there's the fact that a random stranger shows up in a small town where everyone knows everyone and just asks a few suspicious questions and gets more answers that you'd ever think she'd get. Like, exactly where someone lives and what their child relative's name is and what school they go to. That would NEVER happen nowadays. People are highly secretive with their lives and wouldn't want someone knowing where they lived if they weren't the ones giving out the information. It feels like a violation of privacy and people of today don't handle that well. Especially when it comes to protecting children. You wouldn't be able to get a peep of info from anyone without them contacting the person you're looking for first.
I like how this story starts off with a strong focus on the relationships between the characters before the chaos happens. It makes it feel a little more like normal everyday life before the terror sets in. Melanie has nothing better to do than drive an hour & a half spur of the moment to a tiny town to deliver a pair of birds to a girl she's never met all on a whim to make a statement to a gentleman she's only met once. She also has enough money to rent a boat randomly just to make it more of a surprise when she arrives because they can't see her coming up the road. She also isn't so pretentious that she can't steer the boat herself in a fur coat, even paddling at one point to stay quiet. Clever girl. She even winds up wearing the same outfit for 3 days. Despite being an obviously pampered daughter of a rich and powerful man, she stays down to earth enough to not seem pretentious and even has a unique sense of humor. I definitely enjoyed her character.
The visuals of having a swarm of birds fly down the chimney flue into the den was definitely a horrifying visual. I could only imagine what it would feel like to have so many birds swarming around the room with loads of tiny cuts breaking open on your skin each time another one flew by you. Also, the birds accumulating on the school playground is something that will stick with me. The day after I watched this movie, I drove to work and saw a flock of birds on some powerlines and I couldn't help but think of the movie. I can only imagine how people reacted when this movie first came out before society got a bit desensitized by the volume of horror movies we're exposed to now. Kind of like the mother in the diner. She was so worried about the alarmist conversation the others were having that she didn't use it as a lesson to her children. They were frightened and she kept encouraging their fear with her own. Instead, she could have used that as a lesson to be aware of the things around them, but to stay calm instead of freaking out the way she did. The drunk Irishman talking about the end of the world stayed more calm than that mother did. I got a kick out of him, though I knew that he was going to start freaking people out. Maybe it's a typical Irish thing to accept the end of the world as a reality and just to carry on with your drinking like nothing's wrong? It seemed perfectly normal to me. LOL.
If you haven't seen this movie yet, it's definitely worth a watch. I went into this knowing that the technology of the 60s was limited and what they would be able to do for the effects with the birds would seem a bit more primitive than what we have today. I also don't think that it took away from the movie any, either. It was still very entertaining and leaves you with a sense of awareness when it comes to the birds around you.
Join me for my next posts when I start my month of Halloween inspired choices of horror movies. For my first choice, I'm going with Night of the Living Dead to stick with my 60s theme before moving onto a couple of films from the 80s. You can watch it with me on HBOMax, Starz, Amazon Prime, Peacock TV, Paramount+, or Hulu. Stay tuned!
For more movie love, check out my other blog, "You're Watching That Again?!"
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