The Birds

1963

PG-13

Moving right along with another October Movie Review. I watched the Alfred Hitchcock classic, The Birds, last week and before I even watched it, I knew it was one that I wanted to review. Last week was the first time that I had seen the film and I wanted to give it a go. In 2016, it was preserved in the National Film Registry in the US Library of Congress, so it clearly is a film with a big reputation behind it. Does it live up to the hype though? Carry on with the article to find my take on it. Since the film is so old now, I will dive a little deeper into it, so if you haven’t seen the film, proceed at your own risk for the rest of the article there may be spoilers.

The film is set in what was present day San Francisco and the first scene of the film takes us to a pet store. We see Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) looking to purchase a bird and she meets a local town lawyer, Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) while bird shopping. The two don’t exactly hit it off at first, but Melanie is clearly infatuated with him from their first meeting. Mitch was looking to buy two lovebirds for his little sister’s birthday, but they didn’t have any at the time in the local pet store. Melanie was dead-set on buying the birds for Mitch, but she didn’t get his name or address, so after a little digging, she found out where he stayed in town. She bought the birds and delivered them to his apartment, but she soon found out that he wasn’t in town for the weekend. He visits his mother and sister in Bodega Bay on the weekends.

After finding this out, Melanie hops in her convertible and heads to Bodega Bay to deliver the birds. She wants to know the name of Mitch’s sister, so she can give her a nice birthday card. She is told to meet Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), the local school teacher to confirm the girl’s name. Melanie arrives at Bodega Bay, but doesn’t intend to be noticed by Mitch or any other member of the family, so she rents a boat to be as discreet as possible. She walks inside the Brenner house and delivers the birds without anyone noticing, but as she leaves, Mitch sees her riding out on the bay. Mitch drives into town to meet her at the dock. He is startled, but flattered at the same time. Melanie arrives at the dock, but is attacked by a gull just before she arrives. Knowing that this is an unusual occurrence, Mitch attends to Melanie at the local café and this is where Melanie meets Lydia (Jessica Tandy), Mitch’s mother, for the first time. Lydia doesn’t really care for Melanie and it shows. Melanie also meets Mitch’s sister, Cathy (Veronica Cartwright).

Meanwhile over the next couple of days, the local birds in town are causing quite a stir. They aren’t acting normal and the town is reporting more instances of birds attacking humans. They travel in flocks and attack in flocks, which is puzzling to the townspeople. The birds attack everyone from school children to townspeople and even houses and building. The meaning for their attacks is mysterious to everyone and some people even lost their lives from these attacks. The townspeople cope with this the best way they know how, by staying in their houses and boarding up their windows and doors. The attacks almost seem calculated and their purpose for attacking is still unknown to the townspeople. As mysterious as the attacks are themselves, what is even more mysterious is their nature to flock in groups of over one hundred and watch as they see the fear in the townspeople. Do they feed off of the fear? The human blood? Nobody knows.

This is a 2-hour film and I have to say it was interesting for most of those 2 hours, but the big, glaring reason why a small part of it wasn’t interesting was the fact that there wasn’t a reason given as to why the birds attacked the people. No reason whatsoever. The birds attacked for the sake of attacking. It makes absolutely no sense. Birds don’t attack for no reason at all, there has to be a motive or the birds have to have something wrong with them. For the entirety of the film, I found myself waiting, and waiting to see if anyone had an explanation, but spoiler alert, you will never find out.

Speaking of the cast, all but a couple of the actors most famous film was in fact The Birds. Although many of them had a long list of accomplishments, this film is such a well-known work that I don’t see many movies topping the popularity of The Birds. This film happened to be Tippi Hedren’s first credited acting gig, which is pretty impressive. Rod Taylor’s biggest role was probably being the voice of Pongo in One Hundred and One Dalmatians. He also portrayed Winston Churchill in Inglourious Basterds and was the leading man in The Time Machine. Jessica Tandy had leading roles in Fried Green Tomatoes and Driving Miss Daisy. Suzanne Pleshette was most known for her leading role in The Bob Newhart Show and Veronica Cartwright had a big role in the Sci-Fi classic Alien.

For its time, this film may have been advanced as far as special effects, but in terms of 2020, it is bad. Going into it I obviously knew that was going to be the case, but the actual birds sound effect sounded like a record being played in reverse continuously. I didn’t expect the effects to blow me away, but it appeared like it was actually a dangerous film to record. There were real birds used and in a lot of cases, the birds did actually attack the actors.

After every film I watch, regardless if I do a review of it, I like to research the film and the story behind it. I almost regret researching this film, because it makes me like it a little less. Tippi Hedren said that the last bird attack scene took one whole week to film and claims that it was the worst week of her life. She also claimed that Alfred Hitchcock emotionally and even sexually harassed her in the two films she appeared in that he directed. It was also said by other cast members that Hitchcock was extraordinarily controlling over Hedren. These disputes are alleged, so nothing was proven, but it is unsettling to say the least.

As far as the film itself goes, there are mixed, but mostly positive reviews. It is truly one of those films that the audience is either going to love or leave confused and dislike it. I lean more towards the latter. The whole point of the story made no sense. If they simply would’ve given an inclination of a reason or heck even discussed the mysterious nature of the birds more at length, I think that would’ve been fine. Birds normally don’t crash through doors and destroy property, especially with no motive. Most films of this nature leave with an open ending or without a clear resolution, so I expected it to an extent, but it ended in such an odd manner, it felt incomplete. The acting was great, but the whole direction of the film was pretty crappy.

Do I recommend this? To people who haven’t seen the film, I would say watch it once and see for yourself, because you may love it. Personally, it will not be a film that I will watch over and over. I may watch it one more time to see if I can make sense of it, but I can’t really see myself watching it more than that. The film is rated PG-13 and there are some quite unsettling scenes, so be aware of that. It has a 7.7/10 rating on IMDb and it is 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. In my opinion, it is way overrated.

GRADE: 2.2/5

Yacs

Movie Review: The Birds