6/13/18 The Birds

Post date: Jun 17, 2018 9:59:08 PM

The 1963 movie shows the techniques of Hitchcock movies except one. There are no famous movie stars in the cast. He wanted to tell a story that could happen to anyone. Consequently, the movie is not as enjoyable as one starring Cary Grant.

I always think it is silly that the movie is advertised as being written by the same author as Hitchcock's previous movie: Rebecca. Hitchcock is known for taking a story he likes and rewriting most of it or just taking the title. It is true in this case. The original story was about a farmer on his tractor being attacked by birds.

One of the big choices made by the filmmakers was to use normally friendly birds. They wanted to show nature gone wrong not just a flock of birds with a bad attitude.

The problem I have with this movie is that most of the characters are unlikeable. When they are put into peril, I am not fully engaged. A revelation happened when I was projecting the movie for the UBC Film Society and the evil film distributor sent us a black and white print. I had seen the film a number of times before but the black and white gave it sense of film noir. The character faded a little into the background and the situation of nature rebelling came to the foreground. I have considering showing it as black and white but the color red is a running motif in the movie and I can not figure out how to turn off the color on my tv.

Donald Spot mentioned in his Hitchcock book that "The Birds" consisted about 1400 shots. This was twice as many as his other movies. Of course, today's movies have thousand of shots, but consider Kubrik's 1980 horror movie "The Shining" which had around 660 shots.

My favorite scene in the movie is the one in the playground. It's classic Hitchcock suspense. The character's orderly lives are disrupted by the birds. They find a lull where one of the characters takes a break on a playground bench listening the rhythmic sounds of children singing. The audience sees the impending doom which the character does not.