The Birds (1963)

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

THE BIRDS

USA, 1963

9/10

"Can I bring the lovebirds, Mitch? They haven't harmed anyone."

"Oh all right, bring them."

**Slight spoilers below**

Alfred Hitchcock is my all time favorite movie director, and so when he worked in my favorite genre, the horror genre (which he only did twice in his career), the product is outstanding. This film is fantastic, it's really only 9/10 because it's not as good as some of his other films. The movie follows Melanie Daniels as she pranks a man she met in the pet store to a small town where he spends the weekends with his mother when the house and the rest of the town become under attack by various kinds of birds. That's basically it for the plot. That's why I believe that no director other than Hitchcock could have been able to pull this off as well as he did. 

Something that is curious about the film is its complete lack of a soundtrack. The closest thing we get to music in this film is when Melanie is outside the school, listening to an almost never ending refrain that the school children are singing as a flock of birds grows larger and larger on the playground behind her. This is probably one of the most suspenseful scenes I've ever seen in a horror movie. The complete silence of the attack scenes, save for sounds of screaming people and the cries of the birds gives an incredibly creepy realism to them, and it works brilliantly in this film.

The beginning of the film is strangely light-hearted. It follows Melanie as she attempts to deliver some lovebirds to Mitch without him seeing her deliver them, and even after that, life continues on normally until Melanie attends a birthday party, along with the first (organized) bird attack. I say organized because of mentions of smaller, one-bird attacks (like the bird that hits Melanie on the boat) that aren't on the scale of the later attacks. The rest of the film carries on with bird attacks, followed by peace, only to be followed by more bird attacks, until Melanie and the Brenner family lock themselves in their house. This reminds me of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) because while they feel safe for the moment, both the audience and the characters know that this peace can't last forever, and that the birds will eventually attack. This plot, due to its feeling of being completely spontaneous, shouldn't work very well, but Hitchcock pulls it off masterfully.

Another thing that Hitchcock pulls off brilliantly is the huge mystery of the film. We never really find out why the birds are attacking, only some different, and probably not accurate, guesses made by various characters throughout the film. This will no doubt annoy some viewers (especially the younger ones), it still works very well in the film. The final shot of the family riding off into the horizon, once again the feeling of current peace yet impending doom, may also annoy viewers, but it works extremely well in the film.

To make some more comparisons to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, this film is a very character driven one, as there is a lot of down time between the bird attacks where we learn about the various relationships between characters. It is always tricky to do this because if the characters are written with not enough complexity then it's boring, and if they don't respond realistically, it's not scary. However, like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, all the characters are interesting, believable, multi-dimensional ones. But just because some of the film is focused on the interactions of the characters doesn't meant that there aren't good bird attack scenes, because there are. There is an amazing scene where Melanie stands in a phone booth to escape the birds, and since Hitchcock films this scene from within the booth, we feel just as claustrophobic, exposed, and caged as Melanie does. This is just one of the many superb attacks done by birds throughout the film. The effects in these scenes, while they have aged, are done very well, especially considering the time period they were created in.

All in all, THE BIRDS was a pretty risky film to make. It is extremely character driven, and it is a subject that is pretty difficult to make scary (you have to admit that if you just hear the synopsis, the film sounds a bit silly). Yet Hitchcock manages to pull it off brilliantly in the way that only the Master of Suspense could.