Review of 'The Birds' 1963

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Writers: Daphne du Maurier (story) Evan Hunter (screenplay)

Stars: Rod Taylor, Tippi hedren and Suzanne Pleshette

A wealthy San Francisco socialite peruses a potential boyfriend to a small Northern Californian town that slowly takes a turn for the worst when birds of all species suddenly begin to attack! In this film the threat isn’t a group of foreign spies, like in ‘North by Northwest,’ but and external threat of nature.   

“Fast pacing frequent action”

Examples:

Birthday party where the children are attacked and forced to cut the party short and go inside the house.

School attack as the birds chase the children into town and the children have to go on forward to the hotel for safety.

Café scene.

House attack as our main characters are trying to keep the birds from breaking into the house.

Suspense:

When Hedren is waiting outside the school and one by one more and more birds come onto the children’s playground behind her she looks back there’s one bird, looks back again and there’s an army!

The film is again a villain driven plot being more of a threat as there are more birds than humans.

There is no music in the film to create more suspense and tension so we don’t know when the birds are going to attack! The only music there is in the film is use of mixtratinium and the children singing in the classroom scene before the birds attacked the children. 

There were a number of endings considered like for example the Golden Gate Bridge completely covered by birds. The actually ending of the film however, didn’t actually say ‘the end’ to imply an unending terror.

Effects

370 set shots, the final shot is a composite of 32 separately filmed shots.

The scene where Tippi Hedren is ravaged by birds in the attic took a week to shoot. The birds were attached to her clothes by long nylon threads and she was actually got cut in the face by a bird in one of the shots. This scene in particular was the main cause that Tippi Hedren was in therapy for years!

The premiere

When audiences left the UK premiere at the Odeon, Leicester Square, London they were greeted by the sound of screeching birds hidden in the trees!